Red Highway
Page 16
“Get the sonuvabitch!” screamed Farnum. What the hell is holding him up? He squinted through the rain, trying to keep his eyes on the ghostly figure racing toward the back of the house next door. Once he thought he saw him slump forward again, then get up and run on. In the next instant he was gone, hidden by the corner of the neighboring dwelling.
“We got him!” shouted a trenched-coated agent standing in the middle of the street. He was the one who had uttered the same words not twenty minutes before.
“Did you see him fall?” Farnum retorted.
“Yes, sir. Right there. By that house.”
“Get the hell down there and take a look.” He felt a hand on his arm and started around. It was Sheriff McCracken.
“We got Kern,” he told the agent curtly. “Think there’s any more in there?”
Farnum was watching the movements of the agent’s flashlight near the corner of the next house. “Get some more gas in there and we’ll see. Use it up.”
“All of it?”
“Fill it to the top.” He brought his collar up around his ears.
The sheriff nodded and moved off.
The agent with the flashlight returned, shaking his head. “Nothing, sir. He’s gone.” He had to shout to be heard over the bam of the tear-gas rifles.
Smoke began to billow from the smashed windows. Farnum watched it intently. “All right. We’ll look for him.” The young agent sniffed his approval and left to assist the other lawmen.
Two women came out onto the porch, coughing and holding their hands aloft. The men gathered around them cautiously, guns raised.
Farnum ran his eyes over the scene, now thrown into faint illumination by the overlapping circles of light from porch lights on both sides of the street. He took in the smashed walls and ragged windows, studied the damaged trees and the bullet-chewed front lawn, finally spotted the broken body in the puddle of blood and water, and went up to talk with the captured women. The weather was lousy.
The side door of the shop gave way with a feeble kick. Virgil stumbled over the threshold and found himself in complete darkness, the night closing in on him like the walls of a vise. Water streamed from his clothes and spattered on the plank floor. Or was it blood? Blood from his two busted legs. That bastard Nelson Garver.
He made his way through the building, feet dragging, the humming in his ears becoming unbearable. He gripped the pistol tighter in his hands. You’re in a lot of trouble, son. The voice was soft, almost paternal. An armed robbery charge like this will get you sent up, you know that? That damned bartender. One hundred and fifty jugs of Oklahoma White Lightning bought at a bargain, and then he goes and files a charge against him for armed robbery. He bumped into something hard and cursed.
The back part of the shop was open, free of obstacles and dangerous projections. Virgil staggered to the center. He felt something soft against his knees, reached down and felt it with his hands. Then he grunted and threw himself headlong across the bed.
That sonuvabitch with a face like a ferret. We’re gonna find you a place to stay. Ain’t that nice? Virgil tried to spit in the narrow, sneering face that floated before him, but his mouth was dry. The best he could do was hiss.
Hit the small towns, the one-street burgs. Who could have expected Roscoe Hunter to run out like that? Roy was right. You never know when they’re gonna be tearing up the streets in those big cities. They killed Boyd in Kansas City. I told him not to wear that damn vest.
It was getting darker. How can it get darker when it’s pitch-black already? Worth thinking about. Damn sheet’s getting wet. Roof must leak. Sticky, too. That bastard Nelson Garver. The bed began to move, and Virgil knew he was lying between the front and back seats of a Saxon six. Missouri comin’ up.
The pistol felt heavy in his hand. Some gun, huh? Thompson submachine gun, .45 caliber, 1600 rounds per minute. Really make the cops run with this one. It fell to the floor with a thump. Get it later.
It’s not just the banks. Hazel looked at him, her face a mixture of anger and anguish. You’ve escaped from three prisons. You’re wanted for the murders of three men … Virgil, isn’t that enough? No, Hazel, not nearly enough.
It came while he was reliving the Dawes bank job, between watching Floyd Moss guarding the outside with his sawed-off shotgun and noticing that old constable, Ed Fellows, coming over from Fred Benson’s service station. He felt cold for a second, unbearably cold—and then, suddenly, he was warm. This, he thought, must be the moment. But he never finished the thought. It sure was warm.
The sheriff kneels, dips his fingers in the blood. It is fresh. Straightening, he taps two of his deputies on their shoulders and jerks his head to indicate the darkened furniture shop that looms quietly over the narrow street, its big plate glass window made opaque by a drawn shade. The deputies nod their understanding and signal to the others. In the charcoal-gray of early morning, the search for Virgil Ballard comes to a halt.
“We know you’re in there, Ballard.” The sheriff’s voice is awkward through hours of unuse. He clears his throat raspingly before going on. “Throw out your gun and come out with your hands in the air.” The rain patters through the stretch of silence. After two minutes, the lawman indicates the first two deputies. “Go around back and force your way in.”
When they have gone, McCracken sweeps his eyes around the rest of the men and grasps his shotgun tightly. The others understand. They reach the glass-paneled door and wait. Water seeps through between the rolled awning and the wall of the shop and bleeds down the black window like nervous perspiration.
There is a crash from inside the shop. The deputy nearest the door responds by kicking and bursting the lock, and the lawmen rush inside. They pause in the opening, shotguns ready. The interior is a jumble of indistinct black shapes with a wide aisle cutting through them to the back of the shop. The light is gray and indistinct, filtering in through the smashed door and lying across the scene like a dampened sheet.
“Back here, Sheriff.” The voice comes from the back of the shop. “We found him.”
Lanky Jake is the first to reach the open space before the back door. He whistles. The sheriff is next, followed by the rest of the deputies.
The two men who had come in the back stand on the other side of the bed display, looking like pallbearers at a funeral. Virgil Ballard is stretched facedown across the bed. His face is buried in the pillow, partially obscured by his disheveled blond hair. The converted Luger lies on the floor, inches beneath the fingers of his limp hand. The blood on the tangled bedsheets is still fresh.
“He must of taken a pound of lead.” Jake’s voice is hushed.
“Blood till hell won’t have it,” drawls another.
The sheriff nudges the thick-set deputy at his side. “Go get the feds.” The deputy withdraws grudgingly.
“Lookit his legs.” An older deputy directs his flashlight on the foot of the bed. The pinstriped trouser legs are stained an ugly brown.
Jake hisses an astonished oath. “Christ, how’d he get this far on two busted legs?”
The sheriff places a fat cigar between his teeth and lights it. “Them kind of people ain’t human. That’s how they keep goin’.” He shrugs it off and turns away, blowing volumes of gray smoke toward the open front door. “Jeez, will you lookit that rain? Probably keep it up all day long.”
A Biography of Loren D. Estleman
Loren D. Estleman (b. 1952) is the award-winning author of over sixty-five novels, including mysteries and westerns.
Raised in a Michigan farmhouse constructed in 1867, Estleman submitted his first story for publication at the age of fifteen and accumulated 160 rejection letters over the next eight years. Once The Oklahoma Punk was published in 1976, success came quickly, allowing him to quit his day job in 1980 and become a fulltime writer.
Estleman’s most enduring character, Amos Walker, made his first appearance in 1980’s Motor City Blue, and the hardboiled Detroit private eye has been featured in twenty novel
s since. The fifth Amos Walker novel, Sugartown, won the Private Eye Writers of America’s Shamus Award for best hardcover novel of 1985. Estleman’s most recent Walker novel is Infernal Angels.
Estleman has also won praise for his adventure novels set in the Old West. In 1980, The High Rocks was nominated for a National Book Award, and since then Estleman has featured its hero, Deputy U.S. Marshal Page Murdock, in seven more novels, most recently 2010’s The Book of Murdock. Estleman has received awards for many of his standalone westerns, receiving recognition for both his attention to historical detail and the elements of suspense that follow from his background as a mystery author. Journey of the Dead, a story of the man who murdered Billy the Kid, won a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America, and a Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.
In 1993 Estleman married Deborah Morgan, a fellow mystery author. He lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Loren D. Estleman in a Davy Crockett ensemble at age three aboard the Straits of Mackinac ferry with his brother, Charles, and father, Leauvett.
Estleman at age five in his kindergarten photograph. He grew up in Dexter, Michigan.
Estleman in his study in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, in the 1980s. The author wrote more than forty books on the manual typewriter he is working on in this image.
Estleman and his family. From left to right: older brother, Charles; mother, Louise; father, Leauvett; and Loren.
Estleman and Deborah Morgan at their wedding in Springdale, Arkansas, on June 19, 1993.
Estleman with actor Barry Corbin at the Western Heritage Awards in Oklahoma City in 1998. The author won Outstanding Western Novel for his book Journey of the Dead.
Loren signing books at Eyecon in St. Louis in 1999. He was the guest of honor.
Estleman and his fellow panelists at Bouchercon in 2000. From left to right: Harper Barnes, John Lutz, Loren D. Estleman, Max Allan Collins, and Stuart M. Kaminsky.
Estleman and his wife, Deborah, signing together while on a tour through Colorado in 2003.
Estleman with his grandson, Dylan Ray Brown, shown here writing an original story on “Papa’s” typewriter at Christmastime in 2005 in Springfield, Missouri.
Estleman with his granddaughter, Lydia Morgan Hopper, as he reads her a bedtime story on New Year’s Eve 2008. Books are among Lydia’s favorite things—and “Papa” is quick to encourage this.
Estleman and his wife, Deborah, with the late Elmer Kelton and his wife, Anne Kelton, in 2008. Estleman is holding his Elmer Kelton Award from the German Association for the Study of the Western.
Estleman in front of the Gas City water tower, which he passed by on many a road trip. After titling one of his novels after the town, Estleman was invited for a visit by the mayor, and in February 2008 he was presented the key to the city.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1976 by Loren D. Estleman
Cover design by Rebecca Lown
ISBN: 978-1-5040-3485-2
This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY, 10038
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