The last thing I remember

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Seconds

I had to try.

“Detective Rose… ” I said.

Detective Rose shifted in the front seat, twisting around to look at me. I could see those sharp, cold eyes of his staring through the diamond spaces in the grate.

“Listen, West,” he said. He had to talk loudly so I could hear him over the radio. “I know you’re not stupid, right? You had an excellent grade point average in high school before you left all that behind and began your illustrious career as a murdering piece of garbage. So I know you got some brains in you.”

“Detective Rose, listen… ” I said.

“So when I say something to you, I expect you to understand me.”

“Detective…”

“And I’m saying something to you now. I’m saying to you: shut up. Is that unclear somehow? Well, let me explain myself further. Shut up or I’m gonna slug you. Got it?”

The driver gave another heavy chuckle.

“You want me to spell it for you too?” asked Detective Rose.

“They’re going to kill Richard Yarrow,” I said. “The guy they were talking about on the radio. The secretary of homeland security. They’re going to assassinate him.”

Detective Rose looked at the driver. The driver glanced over at him. I could see Detective Rose’s unpleasant, humorless smile through the grate. He reached over and turned off the radio. He turned those eyes on me again.

“What?” he said.

“They’re going to…”

“Who? Who’s going to kill the secretary of homeland security?”

“The men. The men in the woods.”

“Oh yeah,” said Detective Rose. His round face went up and down as he nodded. “The little men in the woods. I almost forgot about them. Well, relax, Charlie. Maybe they won’t kill him. Maybe they’ll just carry him off to their magic tree and bake him some cookies.”

This time, the driver laughed louder.

“It’s true!” I said. “You have to believe me. It’s all true. Where do you think I got these bruises, these burns? They captured me. I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. I can’t explain anything. I just know I woke up there and heard them talking. They said they’d never get another shot at Yarrow. They said two more days. That’s when Yarrow’s coming to meet the president. Don’t you see? They must be terrorists. They must be planning to kill him.”

Now Detective Rose turned to the driver. “What did I tell you?” he said.

The driver shook his head. “Amazing.”

“He’s good, isn’t he? He’s a good liar. I can almost forgive myself for believing him the first time.”

I saw a TV show once where this evil doctor declared this guy insane in order to have him locked up in a mental hospital. The guy tried to tell everyone he was sane, but because he was in a mental hospital, no one would believe him. They just thought he was saying he was sane because he was crazy. The guy got so frustrated trying to explain that he was sane that he nearly went crazy…

That’s pretty much what I felt like now.

I threw my head back against the seat, thumping it. I closed my eyes, trying to fight down my feeling of helplessness. What was I going to do? If I couldn’t convince him, Secretary Yarrow would die. I would spend the next twenty-four hours locked away, knowing what was going to happen, powerless to stop it. I couldn’t. I had to do something. Get away. Warn someone.

Find Waterman…

Something…

“Here,” said Detective Rose.

I felt the car glide over to the right. I opened my eyes. I looked out the window. There was a sign up ahead on the freeway. Winchester: Next Four Exits.

“We’re here already?” I said.

“Yeah, too bad,” said Detective Rose. “I was so enjoying our little chat.”

My heart started racing again. Here we were in Winchester already and I hadn’t come up with a plan. I had no idea how I would try to escape. Soon the chance would be past. I had to think of something.

I pressed my face to the window and looked out. I saw a long street with no people in it. Grim warehouses and abandoned brick buildings loomed on either side. I saw garbage in the gutter and paper blowing along the sidewalk. When I turned and looked through the windshield, I could see smokestacks rising up ahead.

The cruiser turned a corner. There was another street, not much different from the last. Old buildings with broken windows. Empty lots littered with papers and metal and cans. Three old men were gathered around a garbage can. There was fire coming out of the can, and the men were holding their hands out to the flames to warm their fingers. I could tell by their scraggly beards and their torn clothes that the men were homeless. They lifted their hollow eyes to watch the cruiser driving past.

Now, when I looked up ahead, I could see one building standing out from the others. The building looked new and shiny, a bright box of metal and glass in the midst of all that dull, dirty brick and cement.

“Is that it?” I said. “Is that the jail?”

No one answered, but I knew it was. We were only a block away. I was running out of time.

I scanned the distance, trying to see what was waiting for me up ahead. I wondered if it would be the same as it was outside the jail in Centerville. Would there be reporters? Crowds? Dozens of policemen? As far as I could see, the street looked quiet. The only person I saw was another homeless man shuffling by a deserted lot.

Detective Rose took out his cell phone. He muttered into it. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I figured he was telling the jail we were coming in.

Now the shiny metal-and-glass building was rising up over us on the left as we came near. There was a broad flight of stairs leading up to the line of glass doors at the entrance. I still couldn’t see any crowds or reporters anywhere. There were a lot of police cars parked out front, but most of them seemed to be empty. A patrolman did get out of one cruiser, but he trotted up the stairs and went inside without even glancing our way.

“There don’t seem to be as many people here as there were back in Centerville,” I said. I was trying to find out what to expect.

“Too bad,” said Detective Rose. “I guess your fifteen minutes of fame are over. You were just a little break between some pop star going into rehab and some movie actor committing suicide. The news cycle cycles on and you’re forgotten.”

He sounded like he was taunting me, like he thought I’d be sorry that I wasn’t in the news anymore. But I wasn’t sorry at all. The fewer people there were around, the more chance I’d have of making a break for it. Even as it was, the odds were heavily against me. I figured when the time came, I’d have only seconds to make my move before I was taken inside that building, seconds before they discovered my loose handcuffs and put me in another cell.

I could feel the fear of that moment rising in me now, an agony of suspense that flowed through me like a low and growing current of electricity. The cruiser was passing the jail on the left, moving along the base of the steps, past the row of police cars parked out front. Now the driver put on his turn signal. I saw there was an alley right next to the jail, a narrow corridor between the jail’s shiny metal wall and the blackened concrete of the parking garage next door.

The cruiser turned and went into the alley shadows. I struggled to slide forward on the seat, to lean toward the grate and look through it, through the windshield at what was waiting up ahead. The alley was empty and, at first, the side wall of the jail seemed solid, an unbroken band of metal at the lower two stories, with grated windows on the six or seven stories above. But as the cruiser continued on, I saw a break in the metal wall, and a heavy door began swinging open. A guard stepped out. He stood in the alley, waiting for us. That’s all there was. One guard. Just one.

Inside me now, the current of electric suspense grew stronger and stronger until my nerves were all snap and spark and motion. This was it. My one chance. No time to make a plan. I was just going to have to look for an opportunity and seize it. Seconds to decide, seconds to move.

The cruiser pulled up outside the open door. The driver turned to look at Detective Rose.

“You gonna need a hand?” he asked.

Detective Rose wagged his head as if he was trying to decide. Then he said, “Yeah, just help me get him inside, then you can head back.”

“Sure thing,” said the driver.

The cruiser’s front doors cracked open on both sides and both men got out of the car at once. Detective Rose walked around the cruiser’s trunk to come around to my door. The driver-a short, solid-looking man with a rough face and graying hair-simply stood up out of the driver’s seat and waited there, leaning on the open door with one hand.

Now Detective Rose was outside my window. Now he was opening my door. I told myself to relax, get ready, take deep breaths. But I was so tense, so anxious, so electric, I could barely breathe at all.

Detective Rose reached into the cruiser and took my elbow. I had to keep my fingers wrapped around my handcuffs to make sure they didn’t slip off my wrists and give me away.

“Watch your head,” said Detective Rose.

I bowed my head down to clear the door and stood up out of the cruiser.

We were only about three steps away from the jail door. In seconds, I would be inside, my one chance would be over. Seconds…

But the seconds seemed long-weirdly long, as if they were passing in slow motion. I guess I was so scared now, so wired up, that my brain was working at a quicker speed. I seemed to have time to look around, to notice everything that was happening. Everything seemed to be sharp and bright, to stand out from the world like the pictures in those pop-up books I used to have when I was little. There was the guard waiting for me at the door. Detective Rose with his face set forward. The driver reaching for my other elbow while his other hand moved to close the driver’s door. I caught a glimpse of the cruiser’s dashboard: the keys in the ignition.

I moved. Like a magician performing a trick, I ripped my hands free of the cuffs. As the driver reached for my elbow, my hand shot up and eluded his grasp. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt. He was thickset, but I had so much adrenaline pumping through me that I think I could’ve lifted him over my head and hurled him to the end of the alley. Instead, I just yanked him across my body and shoved him into Detective Rose.

The two men collided. Caught completely by surprise, Detective Rose was knocked off balance. He lost his hold on my elbow and grabbed hold of the driver to keep from falling over. The two men were carried several steps away from me, clutching each other for balance. At the same moment, I grabbed the cruiser’s still-open door and jumped inside behind the wheel.

It happened fast, really fast. The guard standing by the jailhouse door didn’t even have time to react. I caught a glimpse of his face as I pulled the cruiser’s door shut. It was blank-there was no expression on it-as if he hadn’t even realized what he’d just seen.

I grabbed the car key and twisted it, jamming my foot down on the gas. As the engine roared to life, I grabbed the transmission stick, threw it into reverse.

Someone shouted: “Hey!” I saw Detective Rose scrambling to his feet. I saw the driver pushing away from him, reaching for the gun in his hip holster.

But then I was looking away, looking back over my shoulder as, with a screech of rubber on road, the cruiser ripped away from them, shot backward up the alley toward the street.

As I busted out of the alley shadows into the light, I had a horrible shock. The face of a homeless man frozen in a gasp of surprise was inches away from my window. He was just about to cross the alley. If he’d taken one more step, I would have run him right over. But he pulled up short. He shouted a curse. I rocketed past him, took my foot off the pedal, and twisted the wheel, hard.

The cruiser gave another rubber scream and swung around in the street, throwing up a cloud of dust. A horn blasted loudly as a delivery truck nearly crashed into me, swerving away from me in the nick of time.

Even as the cruiser was turning, I grabbed the transmission and knocked it into drive. I caught a glimpse of the alley. Detective Rose was on his feet now, reaching to his belt for his gun. The driver had his gun out already. He was pointing it right at me. He might have had a shot at me, but he didn’t take it. Of course he didn’t. He was a policeman-one of the good guys. They don’t just open fire on someone who isn’t going to shoot back.

In the next moment, anyway, his chance was gone. I jammed my foot down on the gas pedal. The cruiser bucked like a bronco and then shot past the alley, heading down the street at high speed.