Blind Pursuit

27

“Ma’am?”

The voice on the other end of the line repeated that word insistently.

“Ma’am? Are you there, ma’am? Hello?”

Gund ripped out the handset and cord, dropping both items on the ground.

He had to hurry. Every 911 call was instantly traced. No doubt a sheriff’s department cruiser was being dispatched to the area at this moment.

Erin lay unconscious at his feet. The Ultron had done its job. She would be out for ten to fifteen minutes, long enough to get her back to the ranch.

If he could get away at all.

He’d meant to kill her when she fled the ranch. The pistol shot fired at her car had targeted her head.

Even after the crash he would have shot her, had she not used the wrecked sedan as cover.

Now he was glad he hadn’t ended her life with a bullet. He knew another way, a better way, to punish her for disobedience.

A stitch jabbed at his ribs as he ran to his van. He reached it, then paused with a muttered curse.

The front tire on the passenger side was slowly going flat. A nail was imbedded in it. The bitch’s work.

With the hole largely plugged by the nail, the tire wasn’t losing air too fast. It should stay partially inflated for a few minutes longer.

It would have to. He had no time to change the tire now.

He climbed in through the passenger doorway, slid over to the driver’s seat. The door frame on the left side had been slightly bent in the collision; he would have to hammer the damn thing back into shape. Later.

Twist of the ignition key, and the engine let him hear its reassuring growl.

In reverse, he pulled free of the wrecked Ford, then parked directly in front of it. Removed the towing equipment from the van. Secured the bar and chains.

A noise down the road. Patrol car? No, only the wind. Next time it would be a cruiser, though. Move.

Shifting into low gear, he hauled the sedan out of the roadside ditch. The crushed saguaro lifted the car like some oversized speed bump.

Towing the Taurus, he drove to the side of the Exxon station, where Erin lay unmoving near the rained pay phone. The glare of his one remaining headlight washed over her as he pumped the brake pedal.

Out of the van, quickly. The motor idled, purring like a large somnolent animal, as he threw open the Astro’s side door, then hoisted Erin in his arms and dumped her roughly inside.

Time to go.

No, wait. An idea.

From his glove compartment he removed a black felt-tip marker. Spent a couple of seconds leaning over the phone, pen in hand.

Behind the wheel again. At the rear of the building he executed a wide U-turn, the captured Ford rattling and jouncing, and then he was back on Houghton Road, heading north, punching the accelerator pedal, speeding away from the scene.

Deputies Davis and Smoke arrived at the Exxon station at precisely eleven o’clock.

They found the lights on, a situation unusual but hardly unheard of. Foster Tuttle, the station’s owner, was getting on in years. He was known to be absent-minded about such details.

The pay phone had been torn apart. The handset and cord lay in the dirt.

Davis beamed his flashlight at the phone assembly and saw fresh graffiti scrawled over its metal casing.

COPS SUK ME.

He worked up a goodly mouthful of saliva with the help of the wad of Bubblicious he was chewing, then threw back his head and hawked a shining gob of spit into the night.

“Kids,” he said in disgust.

Deputy Smoke nodded. “Kids.”

For no particular reason Davis retrieved the handset. The armored cord dangled from his hand like a dead snake, the plating bright in the starlight.

“This damn town’s getting more like L.A. every damn day,” Davis muttered.

“More like.” Smoke had learned never to argue with his partner. Besides, it was true, what with the gangs and the drugs and the Mexicans.

“Every damn day,” Davis said for emphasis as they sauntered back to their car.

Before pulling away to resume patrol. Deputy Davis added another stick of Bubblicious to his growing wad, and Deputy Smoke got on the radio to report an act of vandalism and a phony 911 call.