Pursuit

by Gene Hackman

  Julie wanted to lose herself in the roadside pines whipping past her window. The straight, thick trunks and spindly branches a contradiction in nature. A number of quaint farming communities popped up along the winding road, each one with its own distinct high-porched facades. No Wal-Marts or Home Depots in this vast, rolling panorama. Only Mom, Pop, and Uncle Harry passing their friendly stores down through generations of would-be merchants.

  She wondered if one of these quiet retailers would know her daughter’s abductor.

  “I will remain on the proper side of the law, Detective Devlin. No worries.” She hoped a manufactured lilt to her voice would keep Todd from thinking she had gone over the line. “And you, sir, will be the first to know if I go completely south. Okay?”

  “If you go south, that large dark blue Crown Vic with the flashing lights stuck to your rear bumper will be me.” He reached over and squeezed her arm.

  Somewhere out past the lake, a wild dog howled into the night wind. Cheryl listened to the animal’s plea and continued her work. Her idea was to quietly pry as much of the remaining plywood out of the window area as possible.

  Voices floated upstairs. Television laughter, canned and too loud. Her head poised toward the open window, she waited to time the TV actor’s buildup in speech and the subsequent laugh track with the splintering of wood. After each effort, she waited, and then resumed, having not heard the dreaded footsteps on the steep basement stairs. All this through back-to-back reruns of Cheers. She wrapped each jagged piece of splintered plywood with the tattered remains of her dishcloth, trying to muffle the noise. She had long ago passed the point of worrying about protecting her hands. It wasn’t the physical effort that exhausted her, but the coordination attempts.

  She listened carefully, her head bent into the opening. Wiggling through the ragged hole now might have been possible, but weighing the pros and cons of a major gash, she waited. Cheryl pulled out more long slivers from her escape hatch and stumbled off the refrigerator. The noise was more of a scraping effect rather than a loud kerplunk. She lay still on the bare mattress, her sore back enjoying the hard surface of the concrete floor. While trying to catch her breath, the basement door opened. King’s booted step sounded deliberate.

  “Oh, it’s now or never! Tra-la-de-da!” Halfway down, he stopped.

  Cheryl put a twist in her hair and slipped her last oily sardine can into her hair bun. Once again she vowed not to be harmed by Nasty Nashville.

  He sang his country lament in a different way this night, more controlled and personal. Even the guitar, not being played with its usual gusto, was only moderately awful. After too long a while, it stopped. And the heavy footsteps retreated up the stairs with a barely discernible “Thank you, thank you very much.”

  Cheryl breathed a heavy sigh at the departure, and then realized that she had left the curlycue lightbulb turned off. If he’d continued down and opened the food slot, he would have seen her darkness.

  She scanned the room and went back to work on the remaining shards, carefully bending them back and forth until they gave way. One long tentacle stretched from the bottom left-hand corner a third of the way across the twenty-by-eighteen-inch rectangular opening. She knew the splinter would do heavy damage to her left side if she attempted to go through. Electricity hummed while a refrigerator was opened upstairs. Then the soft closing followed by a pan being knocked against metal. Her down-home Caspar Milquetoast was having a midnight snack. She heard a toilet flush and the slow, sliding creak of a window being closed. And all grew quiet. Poised on the fridge, she waited to hear a snore or a cough.

  Cheryl looked around the room, wondering what she could take with her. On the stained floor next to the toilet, she eyed a plastic bag used to bring in groceries. She stuffed it into her back pocket, cringing at the thought that he had touched the bag. She wrapped her blanket into a tight bedroll, placing it around her neck and tucking one end of it into the front of her jeans. Holding the rapier-like plywood needle in both hands, she cranked it toward the broken window and then back a few inches toward the room. She heard nothing from upstairs.

  She pried the piece of wood up and down until it came loose. She glanced back at her prison room: there wouldn’t be anything more to take. Again Cheryl listened for something from above her. Hooking her right elbow outside the window casement, she gripped the left side and pulled. As her feet left the steady support of the refrigerator, she began to wiggle her way through the tight opening.

  Halfway through, with her head and shoulders protruding into the wet grass and earth, she felt the basement window above her trip the overhead latch, bouncing down onto her back, wedging itself into the curve between the end of her spine and butt. She was stuck. Then the rain started. Cheryl reached back with her left hand to try to grasp the hinged window, to no result. The bedroll she’d fashioned caught in the shattered glass of the basement window, making the passage even tighter.

  She stopped to listen again for any noise coming from the living room window just a few feet above her head. If the man had heard her struggles, he would look out that window. Why not? Isn’t that the way it goes for the good guys? The girl shook it off, knowing that feeling sorry for herself would do no good.

  Her hips were killing her. All the weight of her body, centered in the middle of the window, had dealt her a teeter-totter position, half in, half out. The blanket was still caught. Cheryl reached down to where it was stuffed into her jeans and pulled out the other end. She looped the thin cover back over her head and shook the blanket against the glass shards, trying to dislodge it. It took a while, and her shoulder cramped, forcing her to stop. Movement came from the room above her.

  King was up. A light went on, and she heard pacing in what she was fairly certain was the room with the television.

  The window in the house squeaked and bounced while being raised. Cheryl smelled cigarette smoke. An off-key humming started; then once again the hollow thump of the guitar. She renewed her efforts to free herself. The guitar music faded above her head, and the window closed.

  She cursed for having brought the worthless blanket. The pain against her hips and stomach grew more intense. Cheryl thought that if she pulled the rest of the blanket from her jeans, it would help her to slide out from underneath the tight space, but her hips and ribs, along with the now bundled-up cover, put her in a tight fix. The thumping of the guitar resumed and was getting louder.

  He had moved to the basement steps. Of all the nights to serenade her, why now? If he opened the food slot, he would see the light was not on. She pulled her left knee up even with her hip and pushed down hard against the sharp edge of the metal window casement. Inching her way forward, something else began digging at her back: the outside handle of the basement window.

  “Are you lonesome tonight?” His voice echoed in the stairway.

  Cheryl hesitated to answer for fear that he would hear a difference in her voice, considering her head was outside. She pulled her knee even higher and felt a glass shard rip her denim jeans. She wanted to scream but clamped down on her teeth and pushed even harder. His voice changed. She realized he was at the food slot, and would see the light was out. She glanced over her shoulder as the light flickered on, then off. Her jeans belt buckle caught on the bottom of the metal casement as she made a last huge effort to push through. Again, the light went on and off. The fan stuttered, he was in the room.

  He reached up and rescrewed the bulb into its socket. Cheryl jammed her left arm through the opening and reached a small shrub and pulled. With both arms free, she began to work her way through. A hand grabbed her right leg.

  “Where you going, dumpling? The light was out. Don’t you wanna see what I got for you?” His hands started up her legs. “You must be exhausted, having to pull yourself through that tiny opening, sugar.” He pulled himself up onto the refrigerator.

  Cheryl let go of the shrub with her right hand and clung to the prickly bush with her left. She felt King’s hands reach
ing her hips.

  “Could’ve asked me for a walk in the rain, didn’t have to do it on your own, hon.”

  Her right hand felt the sharp edge of the crushed sardine can in her hair bun. Cheryl edged onto her side and waited for his hand to find her belt buckle. He fumbled with it, and then scratched her bare stomach and giggled. She moved her shoulder around far enough to get both hands on the sharp can and then reached down past his wrist. She jammed the ragged edge into his forearm. When he screamed and jerked away, her two-handed grip became an immovable knife point ripping his arm from elbow to wrist.

  “You rotten little murdering whore! I’ll kill you! I’ll—”

  The panicked effort of his having to push her from him and the tightening of her upper body broke her free from the window. She kicked hard with her legs and scrambled away from the house toward the lake, pulling the blanket tight around her waist.

  A large tree loomed ahead. She tripped but kept going. With an unexpected splash, she ended up hip deep in the lake, feeling her shoes sinking into the heavy mud bottom. She turned to the right and waded into the cold water. Chest deep, she looked around. It seemed darker to her left, where silhouettes of huge trees loomed. She looked at the house and saw a flashlight beam darting back and forth. An angry voice screamed a pathetic list of harm that awaited her.

  Cheryl slipped down to eye level in the frigid lake water and moved toward the darkening area of the shoreline trees.

  A nightmare awakened Julie. Finding herself sitting up in bed with thrashed covers wrapped solidly around her feet, her breath came in heavy pumps. An intruder, someone in the house? She reached for her Sig on the nightstand while catching more air into her lungs.

  Listening to the night sounds: a door slammed somewhere in the distance, someone cursed, heavy rain drummed on the tin roof of the utility shed behind her house, and the creaky settling of the old bungalow.

  Her thoughts turned to Cheryl, the cold rain, and her own inability to do anything about her daughter’s disappearance. She flopped back onto the damp sheets, her eyes penetrating the grey riot of patterns on her bedroom ceiling. Above the old brass chandelier, a jumble of shadows converged like a busy urban intersection. The shadowed tree branches from outside whipped the diagonal window designs into a map-like collage. Road-like lines led past oblong shapes of clouds. Or maybe they were balloons. Or even ponds or lakes.

  Cheryl swam a slow breaststroke toward the tree line.

  A flashlight beam continued darting across the blackened landscape. A car started up. Tires shredded the gravel driveway, headlights bounced recklessly through the woods. The light reappeared briefly, searching the side of the road, the culvert. A car door slammed, an engine’s high, revving protest, and spinning tires. Cheryl watched as lights from the car blinked as it passed the tall pines, heading away.

  Her feet touched the slope of the shoreline. She rested, her arms and legs trembling. The moon hid behind heavy rain clouds. To her right, scrub oaks. The dreaded house and a long driveway to her left. That must be the road where the car disappeared. She wondered if it would make sense to go back to the house and get a weapon, since he was gone. Maybe make a phone call, scream for help.

  No lights appeared anywhere along the distant shoreline, making it tough to gauge how far it would be to cross the lake. Cheryl felt sure in her ability as a swimmer, but once there, what would she do? As she stood waist deep in the lake, the cold water stung at her open blisters. Her dilemma got easier when she saw the bouncing lights of the car returning along the tree-lined road. She eased backward into the dark lake and kicked hard with her legs. She kept her eyes on the house and the approaching car. He turned into the driveway, and Cheryl let her head slip underwater, pulling through the water with long strokes. She waited until her breath would not hold any longer and surfaced as a beam flashed across her watered vision. A blurred light set on a tree illuminated the boat she had seen earlier. He seemed to be turning it right side up.

  She arched her body and headed for the distant shore, stopping to look back every ten deliberate strokes. The light beam caught the bent figure pushing the boat into the water. Cheryl renewed her strokes, pulling even harder. The wind swept the rain across the water.

  When she looked back again toward the dimly lit house, the beam had disappeared. He was in the water. She couldn’t see the boat but knew it was there. She swam backward. A flicker of light swept across the lake. A drifting tree branch bumped up behind her head. The rain pelted her. In a way, she thought it to be a blessing. The hard splatter of raindrops deadened the sounds of her heavy breathing and the occasional splash of an arm or leg as it came out of the water. The boat seemed closer. She went under and swam with her arms out front, clearing the way. When she surfaced, the flashlight swept her approaching shoreline. She was closer, but the man in the boat had the advantage. The oarlock groaned against the metal prong in the oar itself.

  “Oh, sweetie! Come back, come back!” he called to her. “I’m not angry.”

  I’ll bet.

  When he stopped rowing and flicked the light, she sank to eye level and waited. The beam twice swept across her face but didn’t stop. The rain dotted its way over the vast lake, making little splash mounds that hid her from the light. She once again began kicking underwater, her eyes never leaving the boat or its treacherous light.

  Her foot hit what felt like a rock. The boat drifted off to her left. Taking a quick glance over her shoulder, she saw the shoreline nearby. The boat continued to her left, so she went to her right, her feet now touching the rough bottom. She crouched to keep her torso submerged, skirting along the shore, looking for a place to pop out where, once on land, she wouldn’t be seen from the boat. His voice again, closer now.

  The deep breath she took before submerging was filled with water, causing her to choke as she fought to stay under. When she came up for air, the boat had continued along her path. It seemed to be several clothesline links away. She crawled on all fours out of the water and onto the rock-strewn mud. She kept an eye on the now-distant boat and bumpy shore.

  Weeds and boulders hid her from view as she climbed a muddy bank and flopped down to rest. The light beam continued to sweep the heavily wooded shore in the distance. She crawled through weeds and broken tree limbs until she could no longer see the scattered beams of light coming from the water. She emptied her sneakers of mud and pebbles. The voice called to her from a distance. A pleading, put-upon tone a reminder of her two weeks of hell.

  She watched as the boat disappeared and then reappeared in the pressing rain and the rekindled flashlight. The flickering light seemed at least a hundred yards from her as she made her way through the woods, and she knew she had to put as much distance between them as quickly as possible.

  The wind picked up and beat against her wet blouse. The bedroll she’d fashioned out of the blanket pressed heavily around her middle. She stopped to lighten her load by tying the blanket to a sapling and twisting it, until most of the heavy water drained. It did feel lighter but would soak up the downpour and become her weighty companion.

  She wanted to toss the blanket but thought she might need it. Wrapping the roll back around her waist, Cheryl continued her exploration. After a dozen steps, she realized she was heading back toward the water. Confused, she saw the searching beam of light reaching much closer. Cheryl turned and headed back into the heavy woods. He called to her as if he were pursuing a dog.

  Traipsing through heavy woods, she’d lost track of time. In front of her, the trees thinned out to an open glade. Through all the trembling cold, she was still happy to be free of basement hell.

  Cheryl knew she had to keep a steady pace. An old fence stopped her trek. She bent it down and scrambled over, falling on the other side in a ditch with steep sides and running water. She stayed on her hands and knees at the top of the creek bed and continued for several yards, straining to see what was next.

  Coming upon another severe grade that appeared to drop down to a
second creek bed, Cheryl slid down, stepping across yet another stream of running water and finding herself in a long, gradual slope leading to she knew not what. The rain finally stopped, along with the biting cold. But still, she realized she needed shelter.

  A number of weird events drifted to mind. Goblins stared at her from overhead branches, and guitar players serenaded her from outside a deep freeze. Her legs gave out, and she slipped on the weed-covered forest floor. Cheryl placed her fists into the wet earth. Her knees bit into the thorny bushes dotting the soaked ground. She promised that she would not be taken again, that she must move on. Head down, she vomited. Deep thunder rolled across the black sky as the rain once again pelted her.

  Stumbling down the slope, she fell into another ditch, letting running water push her down the funnel to yet another stream.

  Cheryl asked herself if she had gotten turned around again. Did she, in her cold delirium, circle back to his lake? She thought it curious that over the thunder and driving rain, she heard the water. Not so when swimming the lake. Why now? Has to be a dream. She shielded her eyes and looked out toward the dark, realizing it wasn’t a lake but a river, one that was heading off to her left.

  If it could be crossed, she felt she would be safe. Easing into the cold water, she stepped to avoid rocks and tall weeds. By the time she traveled forty feet, she was only knee deep. She continued, the current getting stronger. Cheryl cautioned herself not to rush into the unknown. Several hesitant steps landed her chest deep once again. When she was able to break from the force pulling her downstream, she swam for the far shore.

  The moon peeked through the downpour to highlight cliffs fifty feet high bordering the far shore. The water propelled her as she dug for the distant edge. After another hundred feet, she touched bottom, the brush-lined shore within reach. She crawled onto a sandy inlet surrounded by bushes, exhausted but pleased with herself.