Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

Lawrence Treat L As in Loot

It is not generally known, or if known, not generally recognized, that Lawrence Treat was the important pioneer in the origin and development of the contemporary procedural detective novel — the novel of what might be called the “public eye” Of course, in their own times, many famous fictional characters operated as procedural detectives; for examples: Gaboriau’s Lecoq, in his own (and by today’s standards, primitive) way; the various detectives whose exploits (chiefly imagined) were chronicled by Allan Pinkerton; R. Austin Freeman’s Dr. Thorndyke, with his scientific (and still sound) methods; and Freeman Wills Crofts’ Inspector French cases which surely emphasized legwork and painstaking investigation.

But it was Lawrence Treat who gave the realistic procedural approach a feeling of substance and unity in a modern sense. His earliest novel in this genre was V As in Victim, published in 1945 (nearly twenty years ago!) which was ten years before J. J. Marric’s (John Creasey’s) first Gideon novel, Gideon’s Day (1955), and eleven years before Ed McBain’s first novel of the 87th Precinct, Cop Hater (1956). Other Lawrence Treat novels were called, in a title pattern all his own, H As in Hunted, Q As in Quicksand, F As in Flight, and T As in Trapped. Anthony Boucher made the historical point clear when he wrote: “The prime pioneer in the naturalistic novel of police procedure was Lawrence Treat whose stories... are not only far ahead of their times but admirable in themselves.”

(Note to Anthony Boucher: How would you classify William MacHarg’s The Affairs of O’Malley — short stories which were first published in book form in 1940 but began to appear in magazines much earlier? Wasn’t it William MacHarg, that grand old man, who started the procedural trend?)

But to get back to Lawrence Treat and his major contribution to the form: two characters carry the ball, as a kind of ’tec team, in Mr. Treat’s procedural stories — detective Mitch Taylor and laboratory technician Jub Freeman. (Was it sheer coincidence that Mr. Treat chose the same surname as Dr. Thorndyke’s creator, R. Austin Freeman?) The germ of Mitch Taylor’s character (the germ only) came out of a five-minute interview that Mr. Treat had at a New York City precinct house in the early 1940s, when Mr. Treat and a friend reported some obscene anonymous phone calls. The germ of Jub Freeman came from Mr. Treat’s persistent “hanging around” the New York City technical lab — the perfect place, of course, for Jub Freeman to be born. Other realistic details, of procedure and technique and background, emerged from an unofficial “hitch” with the San Diego police force while Edward Dieckman was Chief of Homicide (Mr. Dieckman has since become a true-crime writer who really “knows his stuff”).

And now Lawrence Treat has begun, especially for Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine, a new series of short stories about Jub Freeman, Mitch Taylor, and Taylor’s superior, Lieutenant Decker; and you will find them engrossing tales of the now popular procedural style. But we did want you to realize that in a contemporary sense it was Lawrence Treat who blazed this particular trail — the police procedural novel — and all credit to Mr. Treat for his significant contribution.

It was the middle of the morning when Mitch Taylor drove the patrol car through the archway and into the big courtyard in the center of the municipal building. He parked in the space reserved for police, picked up the hub cap with the bullet hole — if it was a bullet hole — and stuck it under his arm.

Mitch Taylor was a stocky guy, of medium height, chesty, with a small-featured face that had enough flesh on it to take an occasional sock without getting hurt. He always looked cheerful enough but you could never tell what he was thinking, because usually it was nothing. Or anyhow, nothing you ought to know.

What he was thinking now was, he should have left the thing back there in the junk yard where he’d spotted it. Because he was going on vacation tomorrow — three weeks of it up at the lake — and no new business was going to mess up that vacation.

A couple of hours ago he’d had everything figured out He still had those summonses to serve, and he’d string those out till afternoon. Then he’d stop in at the garage and tell them there was something wrong with the steering, he didn’t know exactly what, they’d better look it over. He’d hang around while they found nothing, and when it was time to quit, they’d stop kidding themselves and he could go home and start packing.

That’s what life was for. Vacations. Him and Amy and the kids, taking it easy, having a good time. A girl like Amy, she came ahead of everything else. She always had and always would.

Still, when a hub cap starts telling you stuff, you can’t pass it up. You take it up to the lab and find out — from Jub Freeman, who was a wizard at things like that.

Jub, perched on a stool and hunched over a work bench, was studying something under a microscope when Mitch marched into the lab. At the sound of the door Jub swung around, grinned, and ran his hand through what was left of his hair, which was pretty well thinned out from brain-work.

“Hi,” he said energetically. “All set to go?”

“Right after breakfast tomorrow. Bought me a hub cap, too, on account I had one missing.”

Jub glanced at the disk in Mitch’s hand. “That’s the new one?” Jub asked.

Mitch shook his head. “No, I got mine outside. Thought maybe you’d want to look this one over.”

Jub took it and examined it carefully. He tilted it so that the light caught it at an angle, then he bent down and squinted at the hole. He ran his finger along the rim, turned the cap around, and studied the inside. After a couple of minutes he put it down on his work bench.

“Chevy,” he said. “Almost brand-new. Not driven in the winter because there’s no corrosion from the salt. No wrench marks, either. Where’d you get it, Mitch?”

“Junk yard,” Mitch answered. He didn’t give any details and Jub didn’t ask for them. Jub merely tapped the disk as if he wanted to test the ring it gave out.

“Brand-new Chevy,” Jub said again. “Are you thinking the same thing I am?”

“Rogan,” Mitch said promptly.

Jub nodded. Rogan was a bank robber who’d broken out of jail the month before and was still on the loose. His picture, on Wanted sheets, was all over the place and showed a squat, heavy-set guy with bulging eyes, a broad bulging forehead, and spread ears. A teller at the Farmers’ Bank had identified him as one of the pair that had held up the bank a week ago and got away with $14,000, after exchanging shots with the guard. They’d been driving a brand-new, stolen Chevy; but they’d ditched it somewhere, switched cars, and smashed their way through a road block, where they’d killed a State Trooper in a gun battle and then escaped in his car. The state car had been found the next day, with the body of one of the bandits in it. But neither Rogan nor the money had showed up.

Jub fingered the hub cap. “Didn’t notice a new Chevy in that junk yard, did you?”

“When I got a vacation coming up?”

Jub got the point. “Look,” he said. “Why don’t you go back there while I check this over? If it’s a bullet, I’ll know it from the trace metals, and I can drive over later and try to spot the Chevy. That way, I’ll turn in the report, not you. Okay?”

Mitch nodded. “Just so I don’t get tagged with a case,” he said.

But out at the junk yard again, Mitch saw he’d taken on too much. There were acres of cars — rusty jalopies, smashed-up wrecks, cars without motors, cars without wheels, cars upside down or lying on their sides. Killer cars — and over-age cars that had been towed here to die a natural death. They were stacked up everywhere and they overflowed into a marshy hollow wild with sumac or something... Easy to run a hot car in here, bust it up with an ax, and then seem to abandon it And maybe with $14,000 in cash, locked up in the trunk... It was possible — a graveyard of old cars was a pretty safe hiding place for loot.

Nevertheless Mitch realized he had pulled a boner coming back. Because after a while this Jackson fellow who ran the place would come over and ask Mitch what he was doing. Mitch would say he was just looking, or else he’d say he was doing calisthenics or something, and the guy would get nasty about it and the whole thing would end up with an arrest. Then Mitch would have to hang around tomorrow so he could show up in court.

This Jackson fellow was built like a tackling dummy, except he had muscles instead of cotton wadding inside him. An hour ago he’d told Mitch to fork over fifty cents and go out and find his own hub cap. Tough cookie, this Jackson.

Any other time Mitch would have taken it all in stride and walked in without any worries except maybe was there any poison ivy around. But now he stared at the shack that was supposed to be an office, over there at the other end of the lot. There was no sign of Jackson, so the hell with him.

Mitch had gone about twenty or thirty feet, watching his step so he didn’t trip over the rusty springs and fenders and stuff, when the kid’s voice sounded out. “Boom-boom — you’re dead!”

Mitch swung around and saw this brat with the toy gun. He was maybe six years old, but for a second or two that mug of his had wrinkles and the gun was real, so Mitch froze.

There couldn’t be two faces like that — the same bulging eyes and spread ears and oversized forehead. For that second Mitch felt as if he were seeing Rogan cut down to size. Then the kid’s eyes seemed to get a little smaller, the ears weren’t quite so spread out, and the forehead looked almost normal. Mitch wasn’t sure now, except the impression stuck.

Yes, this was Rogan’s kid. He was sure of it.

Mitch let out a smile, lifted his hands and said, hamming it up, “You got me, kid. Now what?”

The kid stared, bug-eyed. Mitch, real friendly-like, said, “What’s your name, huh?”

The kid didn’t answer.

You can chase a kid in the open and catch him easy, but six-year-olds are slippery and they get through narrow spaces where a grown man can trip and land flat on his puss. And by the time Mitch could get hold of the kid and drag him off, Mitch would have Jackson on his neck, and then what?

So Mitch said, “You know what?”

The kid didn’t move.

Mitch lowered his hands and said, “I give up. Now you take me to jail and lock me up.” And trying to make like a crook caught with the goods, he approached the kid.

“Pretend that’s your car over there,” Mitch said softly. “You bring me over there and make me drive, see? You just keep your gun on me, and I can’t do a thing about it.”

The kid still stood his ground, still didn’t say anything. Maybe he was scared or maybe they’d left the brains out of him and he didn’t have enough sense to scram. Anyhow, all he did was say, “Boom-boom” again, but in a frightened kind of a whisper.

So Mitch put his arm around him, and when the kid tried to pull back, Mitch picked him up and said, “What’s your name, huh? What are you doing here?”

The kid shook his head and dropped the toy gun. Mitch picked it up, stuck it in his pocket, and brought the kid over to the squad car and settled him down on the front seat Mitch chattered all the way back to headquarters, but the kid didn’t say a word. His vocabulary was boom-boom, and that was it He took Mitch’s hand when they got out of the car, and he kept hanging on tight while they walked down the corridor and through the door marked Homicide Squad. There, a couple of the boys were kidding around with the blonde who did secretarial work for the lieutenant.

They stopped talking at the sight of Mitch and the kid. Bankhart said, “Holy hell — did you make a pinch?”

The blonde smiled and bent down and said to the kid in a soft, sugary voice, “Hello. What’s your name?”

Junior’s face puckered up like a walnut and he burst out crying. Mitch, still holding his hand, said, “He don’t talk much. Lieutenant in?”

The girl nodded. Mitch, dragging this yowling brat along with him, crossed the room, knocked on the lieutenant’s door, and went in.

Lieutenant Decker had the smallest office and the biggest collection of junk in the Police Department. He went in for souvenirs of his cases and for magazines on criminology, and he stacked them up on the filing cabinets and the shelves and the window sill and the extra chair, along with the official reports he was always in the middle of reading. He swung around and looked at Mitch and the kid as if they both belonged in the loony bin, which maybe they did.

“Well?” Decker said. But the kid let out a blast and kept pumping it out, and Decker put his hands over his ears. When the kid finally stopped for breath, Mitch had a chance to say something.

“Take a gander at him,” Mitch said. “What does he look like?”

“Like a damn nuisance,” Decker said. “What’s the idea?”

Things weren’t working out exactly the way Mitch had intended. He’d figured the gang outside might be a little slow on the trigger, but the lieutenant ought to be sharper. Still, Mitch had to admit that a six-year-old, with his face screwed up and his heart in shreds on account maybe he wanted his mother, didn’t look much like Public Enemy Number One.

All Mitch said was, “He got lost.”

“Brother!” the lieutenant exclaimed. “You’ve pulled some screwy ones, but this time — wow! Listen, Taylor. In case nobody ever told you, the Homicide Squad handles crimes of violence against the person, but there’s a Lost and Found Department and a Juvenile Bureau, and you can classify the kid either way. Use your own judgment.” Decker grinned. “What’s really on your mind?”

Mitch came straight out with it. “He’s Rogan’s kid.”

Decker flipped back in his chair and almost dumped over. “Did he tell you that?”

“No. But when he quits crying, he looks like Rogan.”

“And when does that happen?” Decker asked.

“Lieutenant,” Mitch said, “this looks like a lead. I could be wrong, but do you want to bet on it?”

Decker nodded. “Yes,” he said. “How much?”

Mitch didn’t take the bait. “What I want,” he said, “is we should put the kid’s description on the teletype and on the municipal radio. A kind of appeal. Then somebody comes and picks him up, and we tail whoever it is.”

Decker frowned, searched his soul, and decided to give Mitch a break. “All right,” Decker said. “You’re going on vacation tomorrow, you’ll be out of my hair. Tell the girl to send it out.”

“Thanks,” Mitch said, and went outside.

The kid quieted down a little, but he wasn’t happy. He needed somebody to blow his nose and tie his left shoelace, which the blonde proceeded to do. Meanwhile, Mitch pulled a form from the supply shelf behind the door and began filling out the description: age, color of eyes, color of hair, height, weight, clothing worn, where found, identifying scars or marks, if any, and so on.

He handed the sheets to the blonde and told her what the lieutenant had said. Then Mitch took the kid upstairs to Jub.

Jub turned out to be no smarter than the others. He frowned at the kid and said, “Who’s he?”

“Rogan,” Mitch said.

“Doesn’t look like him.”

“You know how kids are,” Mitch said. “They change. They look like one thing one minute, and a couple of minutes later they’re different.”

“All right,” Jub said, smiling. “Make him look like Rogan.”

Mitch perched the kid on a stool, gave it a spin, and turned his back. “What about the hub cap?” he asked.

“A thirty-eight slug, and the car was moving fairly fast when it was hit. What about that Chevy?”

“I found the kid, instead,” Mitch said. “I figure Rogan was hiding out back there and used the kid for a lookout. All the kid had to do was make a nuisance of himself, which he’s good at, and that would warn Rogan so he could beat it. I picked up Junior on account somebody has to come around and claim him.”

“Sure,” Jub said. “His mother.”

For the next couple of hours Mitch hung around kind of nursemaiding the kid. Word spread that Taylor had come up with a lulu, and guys from other parts of the building dropped in to see.

Mitch explained cheerfully. “He’s a child prodigy. Going to grow up and be a mental defective. No work, no trouble. State’ll take care of him.”

The kid sat in a corner and played with a busted pinball machine. Mitch almost got to like him, because he was a guarantee against a last-minute assignment. So Mitch was figuring on staying put until five, and then he could blow.

But the kid’s mother walked in, and she had brown, bulging eyes. Her forehead was sort of wide and her ears almost stuck out of her hairdo. She was a dead ringer for the kid.

She gave her name as Mrs. Leonard Jackson and she said her husband ran an automobile junk yard and her child had been playing there when he’d disappeared. And she thought something ought to be done about it.

She was nervous and scared and determined, all at the same time. She threatened to bring a kidnapping charge, but she wouldn’t sign a complaint and nobody could figure out exactly what she was after.

Finally the lieutenant got fed up and gave her a lecture on how she shouldn’t let a six-year-old run around loose in a junk yard where he could hurt himself or get lost or something, and she was lucky they didn’t bring charges against her and her husband for not taking proper care of their child.

She said they wouldn’t dare say that to her husband, they were taking advantage of her because she was a woman, and she up and left. As soon as she was gone, the lieutenant burst out laughing. And the ribbing that Mitch got after that was just a beginning. He figured these wisecracks, they’d still be coming at him three weeks from now, when he got back from the lake.

Mitch let them ride him — there was nothing he could do about it; but he kept remembering that hub cap and how the kid had looked like Rogan when he aimed the toy gun. And how maybe that Chevy and the $14,000 in loot were in the junk yard. And finally, if a kid looked like his mother, why couldn’t he look like his old man, too?

So Mitch, partly because he had this idea in the back of his head and partly because he was sick of being kidded, wanted an excuse to beat it. When he felt the toy gun still there in his pocket, he took the thing out and said maybe he ought to return it. The lieutenant said sure, go ahead, why not?

Before Mitch left, he went upstairs to the lab and told Jub what the score was and asked him to take a trip down to the junk yard. Because, even if Mitch had made a mistake about the kid, that bullet hole was real and there was still a chance of locating the Chevy. So Mitch arranged to meet Jub there and help him look.

The Jackson address was in the west end of town, not too far from the yard. The house was in a fairly good residential section and there were two cars in the driveway, one of them the jalopy Mrs. Jackson had driven down to headquarters, and the other a brand-new job.

Because of the new car and because nobody who ran a broken-down junk yard could afford to live in a house like this, Mitch had a funny feeling as he walked up the short path to the front door and rang the bell. The Jackson female opened the door, and she looked just as scared and nervous as she had been at headquarters.

She kind of shrank back from Mitch and then she said, “We just phoned and asked to have you come and bring it, and they said you were on your way.” She raised her voice and called out, “Len, he’s here.”

Jackson came from somewhere in the rear of the house. “Come on in,” he said He’d been sullen and itching for a scrap when Mitch had bought that hub cap this morning, but now the guy was all smiles and tail-wagging. So he wanted something, and the question was what.

Mitch stepped inside and took the imitation gun out of his pocket. “Junior forgot his toy,” he said.

“That’s what we wanted, that’s what we called about,” Jackson said. He grabbed it, and Mitch wondered if maybe the thing meant something and he’d missed out on it.

He asked directly. “What’s so important about it?”

Mrs. Jackson answered. “It’s Junior’s favorite toy, and he’s unhappy without it. He just can’t bear to lose it.”

“Yeah,” Mitch said, thinking how Junior had forgotten all about it ever since Mitch had stuck it in his pocket, and how neither of the Jacksons bothered to give it to the kid now.

So the toy gun was a handle to get Mitch here; they wanted to talk to him and now they were tense and edgy, but Mitch still couldn’t figure out what the play was.

Jackson said, “How about a drink?”

And Mrs. Jackson said, “Yes, what would you like?”

“Make it a beer,” Mitch said. He kept looking around the room, but he found nothing out of the ordinary, except that the place didn’t look used — no personal stuff lying around, as if they’d just got here and hadn’t had time to get settled

The Jackson dame went out to the kitchen for the beer. Jackson and Mitch sat down and Mitch said, “How come you’re not working? Yard closed up?”

“Too worried about the kid to bother with business,” Jackson said. “I been sitting here and stewing around, wondering what happened to him.”

“Must have been tough,” Mitch said. But if the guy had been worried, why hadn’t he gone up to headquarters instead of sending his wife?

“What was the idea of you grabbing him?” Jackson asked.

Mitch shrugged off the question with the gesture of a guy who had nothing but innocence inside him. “He was lost,” Mitch said. “I felt sorry for the little fella.”

“How’d you get along with him?” Jackson asked.

“Okay.”

“I mean, did he talk much? Kids are funny sometimes. What did he say?”

“A little of this and a little of that,” Mitch said, and he began to understand. Jackson was worried whether the kid had given something away — so worried that he had to find out.

The guy made some remark about the weather and about the neighborhood, and Mitch asked Jackson how long he’d lived here and Jackson switched the subject without answering direct. And all the time Mitch’s mind was churning, trying to figure out the real reason Jackson had phoned for him. Besides wanting to know if the kid had said anything, Jackson hoped Mitch would go back and say the Jacksons were nice normal people, that they had nothing to hide, had even invited Mitch in and given him a beer.

Which meant they weren’t normal and had plenty to hide.

Then it hit Mitch with a jolt that they were covering up — covering up for Rogan.

The kid was Rogan’s, and Rogan wasn’t far away. He’d come back for the loot. Jackson was a stand-in for him and was putting on an act to fool the police, and maybe the dame was Rogan’s wife and maybe she wasn’t, but sure as hell Jackson wasn’t the kid’s father. So if Mitch could slip in a question to show it one way or the other, he’d be on first base, anyhow.

He leaned back in his chair, as if he had nothing in mind except a little small talk. “That kid of yours,” he said. “He go to school?”

“Sure. What about it?”

“I was wondering what grade he’s in.”

“What do you think?” Jackson snapped. Obviously the subject was a touchy one and he forgot about being polite. “He’s six years old. Think he’s in high school?”

“Naah,” Mitch said. “I thought he was in college, maybe.”

Jackson picked up the toy gun and kind of hefted it, balancing it and fingering it as if he were plenty used to guns. “You got a real sense of humor,” he said.

“Yeah,” Mitch said. “What school’s he in?”

“Public school,” Jackson said, spitting the words out.

“Sure. Which one?”

It was the key question. Any father knew what school his kid went to. So if the kid was Jackson’s and everything was on the up-and-up, he’d rattle it off without even thinking. But if he couldn’t, then Mitch was right all the way.

Jackson turned around and called out to the kitchen. “Hey, Betty — our friend wants to know what school Junior goes to.”

She came out of the kitchen to answer. “P.S. Forty-five,” she said. “And we don’t have any beer.”

“That’s okay,” Mitch said. He looked at his watch and stood up. “Time for me to blow, anyhow.” And he left.

But outside, sitting in the car, he saw he had a problem.

He couldn’t let this ride — not when there was a chance he had a lead on a cop killer. On the other hand, if Mitch told the lieutenant that this was nothing but a theory on Mitch’s part, the lieutenant would either laugh it off or else tell Mitch to stay with it until he got something — which meant goodbye tomorrow.

So Mitch was hooked, and he knew it. His only hope was that Jub would dig up something at the junk yard that would blow the case wide open today... or else that Jackson would scare and lead the way straight to Rogan.

Mitch started the car, drove to the corner, and parked on the side street where he had a full view of the Jackson house.

Mitch waited about ten minutes, and then he saw Jackson come out and get in the new car, nose it out the driveway, and head up the street, past Mitch. Mitch followed, staying maybe fifty feet behind and letting himself be seen. After a couple of blocks Jackson pulled up at the curb and got out of his car. Mitch stopped directly behind and waited for Jackson to step alongside.

“What’s the big idea?” Jackson said. Being polite hadn’t worked; it hadn’t fooled Mitch, so Jackson was going to be nasty again. “You tailin’ me?” he demanded.

Mitch shrugged. “Maybe.”

“What for?”

“You guess.”

“Look, copper — I got a right to go where I want to.”

“Sure,” Mitch said. “Anybody stopping you?”

“Just lay off. Turn around and beat it.”

Mitch tapped his hand on the steering wheel, and Jackson had sense enough to see there was nothing he could do.

“Okay,” the big guy mumbled. “Meet me in my office, we can talk there. I’ll be waiting inside.” And Jackson wheeled, marched back to his car, and took off. Mitch stayed behind, still at a fifty-foot distance.

It didn’t take much brain power to dope things out. Rogan was hiding in the office, and when Mitch stepped inside, they’d gun him down and take their chances. Because the way things stood, what did they have to lose?

Jackson kept going, nice and easy, and Mitch kept tagging along behind. He’d find Jub at the yard and pick him up. And what to do then was a tricky business. They couldn’t take the chance of going into that shack, they had no grounds for an arrest, and at the same time they couldn’t just kiss the thing off and go home.

If it wasn’t for that vacation of Mitch’s he’d have hung around and kept an eye on Jackson while Lieutenant Decker ordered an investigation. At the school, from neighbors. Check Mrs. Jackson, check the files. And after a while they’d know. Except that Mitch was planning to go up to the lake tomorrow, and how could you tell how long an investigation like that would take?

So he rolled along and tried to cook up an angle. And all he drew was a blank.

The road was deserted out here, a long stretch with the marsh on one side and the junk yard and its wrecked cars strung along the other. Jub’s police car — its insignia plainly marked — was parked on the macadam, and a couple of hundred feet away Jub was hard at work. He had a crowbar and was forcing open the trunk of a car — a Chevy.

What happened next took Mitch by surprise.

He was expecting Jackson to turn into the dirt road that led to the office-shack, but the guy went right on past, still going slow. Maybe he expected Mitch to stop and talk to Jub, but Mitch didn’t Mitch gave a blast on his horn, blinked his lights, then touched the siren button to attract Jub’s attention. When Jub turned around, Mitch waved for him to come over.

Jackson reacted to that siren as if he were wired for sound. His car seemed to jerk and leap forward, and he had a hundred-yard lead by the time Mitch realized it.

Mitch gave his car the gun, locked the siren button in the On position, and picked up his radio phone. He spoke crisply.

“Signal Nine-Nine,” he said. “Gray Mercury going west on Lincoln.” Then he slapped the phone back in its cradle and concentrated on driving. Signal Nine-Nine would bring out every radio car and every State Trooper on patrol, and Lincoln Avenue would be blocked off. But how soon?

Mitch, with the wail of the siren and the roar of air and the scream of tires in his ears, drove like a speed demon. Four miles to the turnpike. Jackson would cover it in three minutes maybe. Three minutes wasn’t long enough to mobilize and set up a road block, and Mitch had to hang on until help arrived.

Jackson, with that head-start he’d got by speeding up first, was now a couple of hundred yards ahead, and gaining. He swung out to the left abruptly, whizzed past a green car, then careened back to the right. Mitch saw a truck coming toward him, filling the opposite lane.

Mitch realized immediately that he was in a helpless position. Braking easy wouldn’t do any good, and braking hard would probably throw him into a skid — and he’d lose Jackson, besides. So the green car ahead of him or the truck coming toward him had to save his hide — but what the hell was the matter with them? They could see him, they could hear his siren. Didn’t they know they were supposed to pull over and give a cop room?

He gritted his teeth, thought of Amy, of Jackson, of the lake, of everything, of nothing. A green car and a truck, a couple of damn fools who’d lost their heads or didn’t know the rules. Mitch tensed; maybe he prayed and maybe he didn’t. He had no idea. And then the green car ahead of him started doing tricks, in slow motion.

The tail lights went red, the turning signal blinked, but for a left turn. The guy at the wheel was rattled and doing everything wrong. The left blinker went off and the right blinker came on. Mitch was practically on top of the car when the driver finally edged over to the right and slipped onto the shoulder of the road.

Mitch whizzed by, but he never knew how he made it. He felt the sweat pouring down into his eyes and he wanted to wipe it off. But his hands wouldn’t move, they were locked tight on the wheel. Up ahead Jackson was still gaining.

Mitch came out of it slow, and in a funny way he was able to relax a little, to think, to move his fingers again. He brushed off the sweat, decided the hell with this, he’d slow down, save his own life, and let the other boys close in on Jackson. The guy was trapped, wasn’t he?

Then Mitch saw the turnpike overpass ahead, saw Jackson’s brake lights flash on. Jackson’s car seemed to sway, flutter, almost go off the road as it careened into the approach to the turnpike.

Mitch applied his brakes gradually. He didn’t want to go shooting into turnpike traffic at eighty — or at sixty or forty, either. And once Jackson was out there, the State Troopers could worry. Mitch didn’t even have jurisdiction.

Above the dull roar of wind and tires Mitch heard the crash. He had a sick, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach, and he hoped nobody else was involved in the smash-up. He slowed up, and he was doing a modest thirty when he sighted the smoldering wreckage where Jackson had rammed almost head-on into a retaining wall...

Mitch got home around seven. Amy was giving the kids supper, and the hallway of the apartment was jammed with suitcases and bundles. Amy came flying into his arms as he opened the door.

“Mitchell,” she said, holding on tight, “I was getting worried. I couldn’t imagine what kept you so late.”

“We got that bank robber,” he said. “Jub found the loot in an old car in the junk yard, and the guy killed himself trying to get away.”

“Rogan?” she said.

Mitch shook his head. “Naah. That’s what we thought at first. But this bank teller had Rogan on the brain, like lots of other people did. I don’t want to blame the guy for making a mistake.”

“Of course not,” Amy said.

“Well, when somebody held up that bank, the teller thought he recognized Rogan. Only Rogan had nothing to do with it. We just got word they nabbed him out west.”

“Then who did it?”

“Guy named Jackson. We caught up with him this afternoon. He got rattled when he was followed and when he saw Jub searching cars for the money. He knew we were closing in, so he tried a getaway and ran into a stone wall.”

“Well, you can tell me all about it later. Do you know you forgot to write that note to Joey’s school? The one the PTA wants everybody to send, asking for better lunches. I promised you’d write. As a policeman, what you say carries weight.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ll take care of it right away. Amy, does Joey look like me?”

She laughed at the question. “Sometimes,” she said. “Some people think so and others don’t. Why?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I better go write that note. Only... look, Amy, what’s the name of the school? I mean, what’s the number?”