The Undertaker

by William Brown

  Dannmeyer didn't expect that. The ambulance's engine roared and the ex-Marine discovered he wasn't quite as quick as he once was. I caught a glimpse of him over the top of the hood as he squinted into the bright headlights and unloaded his last three rounds into the ambulance's front grill. Typical jarhead. He'd watched too many John Wayne movies and thought his gun and three ounces of lead could stop two tons of onrushing steel. They were too little and way too late.

  The ambulance must have been going thirty miles an hour when it slammed into Dannmeyer with its front bumper and grill, crushing him like a bug against the side of the funeral home and caving in the wall. The rear end jumped off the ground and the side doors popped open. The ambulance hung there in mid-air as the bricks began to fall. The top half of the wall wobbled and then it collapsed onto the ambulance's hood, bringing part of the roof with it, burying the sheriff and the front half of the ambulance under a pile of brick and mortar. The last brick bounced off on the hood and other than the sputter and hiss of the radiator, there was nothing left but silence. The engine was dead. So was Dannmeyer. So was poor Ernie. There was no more shouting and no more gunshots, only a cloud of dust and the groan of twisted metal as the ambulance settled down and died.

  The crash had pinned Ernie upright in the front seat behind the steering wheel and I found myself lying on the floor, wedged between the dashboard and the seat, covered with broken glass. Every inch of me ached. As my head cleared, I smelled raw gasoline and I knew I had to get out of the cab quickly. Straining, I pushed and crawled my way along the floor of the cab and out the side door until I fell out on the ground.

  I rose to my feet and stumbled away, but my ribs and my lower back were screaming in pain. I hoped nothing was broken, but I didn't care. My mind focused on getting the hell out of there and back to Boston. These people were crazy. I had no further interest in Columbus or whole State of Ohio for that matter. I didn't care about Greene, Dannmeyer, or Tinkerton. All I wanted was to forget today, forget yesterday, and forget everything that happened after Gino Parini climbed into the front seat of my Bronco.

  I turned my head and looked back at the funeral home. A fifteen-foot section of the sidewall had collapsed on top of the ambulance, bringing part of the roof down with it. I could even see into one of the chapels. It had been laid out for a funeral in the morning, complete with chairs, flowers, and a casket at the far end. Some wake. If it all wasn't so damned real, I'd have fallen down laughing.

  Good thing I didn't. It was the smell of gasoline that brought me back to reality. The ambulance's gas tank must have ruptured and a dull, orange glow spread beneath the ambulance. In seconds, the flames raced along the length of the vehicle. That was when I forgot the pain and began to run.

  There was a Mercedes parked at the rear of the lot. Probably Tinkerton's. I ran around it trying all the doors, but they were locked. On the other side of the lot, Dannmeyer's police cruiser was still sitting across the entrance, its headlights on and engine running. The driver's side door was hanging open, just as the sheriff left it, and it didn't require a whole lot of thought to realize it was my only way out. I jumped inside and slammed the door. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man in a bloody white smock stumble out through the rear service door and fall on the loading dock. He got to his knees and wobbled back and forth. It was Tinkerton. Like Rasputin, somehow that big bastard was alive and still coming after me.

  I wasn't about to wait. I dropped the sheriff's car into drive and pushed the pedal to the floor. The big cruiser did a donut in the funeral home's front lawn, kicking up grass and dirt until I got it pointed in the general direction of the highway. Behind me, the dark night erupted in a ball of bright orange flames as the ambulance's gas tank exploded. I spun the steering wheel to the right. The car bounced over the curb, through a ditch, and shot out onto the highway.

  Forget today? Forget yesterday? Forget the whole thing? Not very damned likely, not anymore.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Big boys need lots ‘a toys…

  My mind was exploding. I kept hearing the words of that song, “I would walk five-hundred miles, and walk five-hundred more.” Walk? I'd run that far to get away from that funeral home, I thought, as the lyrics kept ringing in my ears. Two days before, I had been a software engineer and rock music aficionado minding my own business in my new job in Boston. Now I was a soon-to-be-very-much-wanted cop killer racing down the dark, country roads of central Ohio in a stolen sheriff's cruiser. I drove on into the night, heading west and south through the cornfields. My back ached, my ribs ached, and my head ached in two places. I took several deep breaths to relax and clear my head, trying to turn my mind loose on the problem, knowing I needed to come up with a plan. I had to get rid of Dannmeyer's car and I had to get away from Columbus as fast as I could. It no longer mattered whether I was guilty or innocent, or that I had barged into the Varner Clinic with the very best of intentions. I left three bodies back there in the flames and rubble and I was the one they would be after.

  The digital clock on the dashboard read 10:15, which meant I had eight, maybe nine hours of darkness left. Even at night, the big, brown cop car would stick out like a sore thumb. After the sun came up? Forget it. The Bronco was probably toast. When Dannmeyer drove back into Greene's parking lot a few minutes ago, I had a sneaking suspicion he was coming back from dumping it off on the East Side. It was already in some chop shop or on its way to Cleveland, and I needed to find a new set of wheels.

  That bastard Tinkerton. How much time did I have before the alarm bells went off, I wondered? With the side wall and the roof of the building collapsing like it did and the ambulance going up in flames, the funeral home had taken some serious hits. It should be a couple of hours at least before they figure out what happened, even if Tinkerton talks. Dannmeyer's body was buried deep under the bricks and I doubted anyone else even knew he was there, so why would they come looking for his car?

  When they finally put the out flames and dug into the rubble, they'd discover George lying in the basement with his throat slit and blood all over the place, Ernie wedged in the front seat of the burnt ambulance with two nine millimeter slugs in his chest, and one slightly crushed sheriff lying under a pile of bricks with a smoking Glock in his hand. All in all, this would be the damnedest collection of bodies Campbell County had seen in a long time, and that didn't count one badly dented and bruised Ralph Tinkerton, Esq. lying on the loading dock. Those were four good reasons not to be caught in Dannmeyer's car. But who else besides Tinkerton, Dannmeyer, Greene, and Varner even knew about me to begin with? That was the problem with a tight little conspiracy. They'd have as much problem explaining it to the real cops as I would.

  Tinkerton and his pals may be super-patriots with badges, working for what they thought was some greater good, but they were wrong. Besides, what could he do? Call in his buddies from Washington? Maybe. Even if old Ralph had that kind of clout, which I doubted, help wouldn't come overnight. Without local police support, even the FBI would have a lot of ground to cover once they get here.

  With one eye on the dark, country road, I looked quickly around inside Dannmeyer's car. He must have just come back from a cop convention. God, but they do like their toys. He'd outfitted the cruiser like the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon, with doo-dads all over the dashboard and console. To my right sat a big two-way police radio, a bracket-mounted portable computer, a mobile Bearcat scanner, lights, switches, buttons, and even a writing pad. That was a stretch. A jarhead? I was surprised there wasn't a pad for his comic books and a holder for some crayons.

  The radio and the scanner had been quiet since I jumped in, other than some routine police chatter. The voices were calm and the language pure, boring cop-speak straight out of Rescue 911 on TV. I'd have traded them all for one good FM radio station and some back-to-back REM. Even some Twisted Sister belting out, “We're Not Going To Take It Anymore,” would do.

  A dashboard bracket held a sleek Vascar radar unit that
was pointed out the front windshield, a video camera, an extra-long flashlight, and a can of Mace. With a collection of toys like those, I could only imagine what he had at home in his basement. There was a steel rack welded to the hump in the middle of the floor that held a 12-gauge shotgun and a high-power hunting rifle with a scope. I shook the barrel. Californians must be out of season, because Dannmeyer had them locked-up tighter than Fort Knox. The key was probably one of the dozen or so on the big ring in the car's ignition, but I didn't know what I would do with a shotgun or a rifle to begin with, so I let it be. He also had a big, round ”Smokey the Bear” sheriff's hat hanging from the headrest on the passenger side of the car, where nothing would dent its lovely round crown. They were great for election posters, parades, and cop conventions. Too bad he wasn't wearing it a few minutes ago, I thought. The brick wall would have crushed that sucker flat.

  The quick inventory reminded me, what did I have? I had thrown on my clothes so fast I hadn't even looked. I felt my hip pocket and realized my wallet was missing. I patted down my front pocket. My cell phone was gone too. Tinkerton had taken them, which meant I had no money, no credit cards, no phone, and no ID. That would make things damned inconvenient. What else did I have to work with? I felt my shirt pocket. The obituaries and stories I had taken from the library were still there, which was a relief. Tinkerton must not have noticed the shirt, so at least I had something.

  Speaking of clothes, my pants leg was torn. The shirt was badly soiled from crawling across the floor of the ambulance, and there were fresh bloodstains from the cut Tinkerton made on my lower abdomen with his scalpel. Hardly the appearance of a solid citizen, I concluded. I pulled over to the road shoulder and stopped so I could open the glove compartment and take a quick look inside. Unfortunately, I found very little of use — maps, car manuals, some spare flashlight batteries, an extra book of traffic tickets, a couple of Hershey's chocolate bars, and a pint of cheap bourbon. With a sleaze-ball like Dannmeyer, the Hershey bars were probably for the little girls and the bourbon was for their mothers. Seeing the Hershey bars reminded me, I was hungry. I hadn't had anything to eat since the corned beef sandwich in Tinkerton's office at lunch. Was that really today? It seemed like a year ago. I pulled out the two chocolate bars, tore the first one open with my teeth, and devoured it. Dry, stale, and hard as a rock, but I couldn't recall anything ever tasting better, as I washed it down with a swallow of Dannmeyer's bourbon to clear my head.

  Squirreled away in the back of the glove compartment I saw a tin Band-aid box with “Sheriff's Coffee Fund” hand-written on the outside. I shook it and popped the top open. Inside was a big wad of twenty, fifty, and a couple of one-hundred dollar bills wrapped with a rubber band. I figured there had to be eight or nine hundred dollars in there, not counting the loose change. You could OD on Starbucks with that much cash.

  That was when I heard the first calls on the Bearcat scanner. It was a fire call to the Peterborough Fire Department. Then another. Finally came the calls for assistance from other police units in the area. More fire units. Campbell County, Westchester, Dalton, and even Columbus. County and state cops, too. I was at least five miles away now, heading west and south, so I doubted I'd run into any of them. However, with all those flashing lights and sirens racing around out there, I had to be even more careful.

  First, I had to ditch the police cruiser. Maybe I could steal a car or a pick-up truck from one of the farms I passed. However, country people usually had big dogs and shotguns, and what would that gain me? They'd see it was gone all too soon, and when they saw the brown sheriff's cruiser nearby, they'd immediately come looking for the new car. No, it would be better to dump the sheriff's car in a built-up area of Columbus, out at some suburban shopping mall, or maybe at a truck stop on the Interstate. Then what? Hitch a ride? Maybe a bus or airplane? Somehow, I needed to push east toward Boston.

  Doug was the owner of a growing business there. He was established. He was somebody. Once I got out of this hick town and out of this hick state, even if nobody believed me here, in Boston they'd have to listen to Doug. Not that I wanted to drag him into this thing; I had already gotten three people killed and I didn't want to add a friend to the list, but I was out of options. Besides, Tinkerton already knew about Doug. What was it he said? Doug was a “loose end,” something he would take care of “later.” It looked like I had gotten Doug involved, and I had to warn him.

  What other choice was there? Head back to LA? They might not be expecting that, but it was a long way to go. Maybe I should try something closer, like Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, or even Indianapolis. They were only a few hours away and big enough for me to get lost in for a while. Not a bad choice, all things considered.

  One of my favorite math classes in college was “Non-Linear Dynamics”, more popularly known as the theory of random events and regular chaos. What it said was that the best pattern was no pattern at all. If you want to remain unpredictable in a mathematical sense, then always do the illogical and the totally unexpected. Yeah, that was what I needed if I wanted to stay free — a little unpredictability and a dose of regular chaos to jam into Ralph Tinkerton's spokes.

  It did beg the question. What was I doing trying to outrun the police in the first place? I hadn't done anything wrong. Those guys had kidnapped me, drugged me, and would have killed me if I hadn't broken free. True, a couple of people died and a funeral home was totaled, but none of that was my fault. It was Tinkerton's. Maybe I shouldn't shy away from the police at all. Maybe I should do exactly what I told Varner I was going to do: take it to the State Police, lay the whole thing in front of them and let them sort it out. That was my best choice, no doubt about it, provided I got rid of Dannmeyer's car. If they caught me in it, I'd never get a chance to explain anything.

  That was when I heard the second set of radio calls. “All units, an APB has been issued for a brown Campbell County sheriff's cruiser, license plate DEL-O23. Observe and report. Do not attempt to apprehend. The driver is an escaped mental patient wanted in the disappearance of Sheriff Virgil Dannmeyer. Suspect is believed to be armed and dangerous. Repeat. Armed and Dangerous. Observe and report only. Do not apprehend.”

  “Escaped mental patient?” Nice touch, Ralph. “Observe and report?” To whom? Ralph Tinkerton, Esq.? You bastard! Too bad Ernie didn't hit you harder. It had to be him. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I had it figured all wrong. They couldn't have found Dannmeyer's body so soon, but Tinkerton saw me drive away. Maybe old Ralph was trying a new angle to box me in. Very clever. Label me as a psycho who kidnapped a county sheriff. Soon it would be “cop killer” and there would be no hope of turning myself in. Every cop in Ohio knew that was cop-speak for “shoot on sight for resisting arrest.”

  There were two highway maps in the glove compartment. One was for Greater Columbus and the other was for the State of Ohio. I turned on the dome light and unfolded the Ohio map. Ditching the car way down in the city was out. There was too little traffic at this hour and the sheriff's car would stand out. Where then? Leave it at a truck stop on the Interstate and hitch a ride out of town? No, too exposed, and a dead give away that I'd left town that way. My best bet was to dump it near office building or a shopping center near the Interstate. That would leave Tinkerton with a whole lot more guesses than answers.

  I looked at the map more closely. I wasn't sure which road I was on, but if I kept driving west it looked like I'd hit Route 42 fairly soon. I could take that south to Route 33 and back into Columbus. I remembered from my earlier trips that the expressway interchanges were full of shopping centers and big office and warehouse buildings. Maybe I could ditch the car and find a friendly trucker or thumb a ride out of town. Yeah, that was my best shot.

  Then I heard the third radio call. Short, sweet, and to the point, it made my blood run cold to hear the pleasant female dispatcher say, “Mister Talbott, we would appreciate it if you'd call the office. You can pick up the microphone hanging on the dashboa
rd and push the little red button, or you could get out of the car and use a pay phone. No big deal, someone here would like to talk to you before things get any further out of hand.”

  To anyone else who happened to be listening, it sounded like she was calling the typewriter repairman or the plumber, but she wasn't. She was calling me. I pictured the hulking frame of Ralph Tinkerton standing behind her, breathing down her neck as he listened. That meant that Tinkerton wanted to keep this whole business quiet, and that meant something. But me talk to Ralph Tinkerton? Go in and give myself up? After the embalming table and the scalpel, that didn't sound too appealing, so I ignored the radio call and pushed the pedal to the metal. The next time I talked to old Ralph, it was going to be on my terms, not his.

  In two minutes, I was on Route 33 headed south toward the bright lights of Columbus. It had four lanes and it carried me across the I-270 Beltway and down into the northwest suburbs. The first big intersection I came to was Longacre Boulevard. It had large strip centers on all four corners, complete with fast food restaurants and big box stores further down the street. The stores were mostly closed at this hour, but I drove into the first strip center on my right. It had a large food store and bowling alley and it backed up to a wooded hill. Perfect, I thought as I continued around back and saw a dark spot between the food store's dumpster and the trees where the sheriff's car couldn't be seen from the highway or the parking lot. The stores would open up at 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning and the workers might arrive a half-hour before. So, if there were no cops or security guards checking the parking lot, and if I was very lucky, Dannmeyer's car might sit here all night without being noticed.