A static crackle over the speaker on his two way radio announced the voice of the night dispatcher. “Units three and four. Units three and four. The suspect vehicle left Pair-A-Dice Motel a few minutes ago heading south. Be advised they are presumed armed and dangerous.”
“Got it, Sally,” Karl, unit three, said into his microphone and glanced up at the mirror to see the pulsating emergency lights of Amos Garrett’s cruiser just a few car links behind him.
“Roger that,” Amos’s voice came through Karl’s speaker. Karl and Amos had only worked together for a short period, but Karl knew Amos, thirty years his senior, had respect for the old protocols. Although they didn’t use the ten codes much anymore, Amos would let a 10-4—affirmative—or 10-20—current location—slip though from time to time. “Roger” was about as much of a compromise as he would make when he acknowledged his dispatcher’s last broadcast.
With lights flashing and sirens belching, the deputies continued north. Karl began to look for a classic dark sedan headed toward them.
Natalie too wondered what Tony was up to but she had a more pressing matter at hand. She had to keep the man who had raped her alive. And now his head rested in her lap near the place he had violated. After what he had done to her in the warehouse, she wouldn’t have shed a tear if he had died in the parking lot. But with Tony’s “you’re next” threat, she had no choice.
Since compassion had surfaced in the motel room, though, she wondered if she could exploit the feeling to overpower the hatred she had nurtured for him in the trunk. The gurgles and coughs he struggled with when he breathed indicated his lungs had begun to fill with blood, an internal hemorrhage she couldn’t affect. But maybe with enough pressure she could slow the external wound from continued bleeding and that clot might stop the surge inside. She pressed her right hand on his chest.
Through the crisp night air, the scream of distant sirens drew her mind away from her burden. She looked up. To her left, two sets of flashing lights headed their way, and in seconds, two sheriff cruisers blew past her. A quiet prayer passed over her lips, “Oh God, let them find my note.” After her determination last night that God had not engineered this circumstance, it surprised her how natural the first prayer she could remember uttering since before she left Iowa seemed. It brought little peace. There might be much more terror to endure, but a plan had been set in motion. Now, out of her hands, maybe the hand of the God of her childhood could save her after all.
Rudy sensed that Tony had turned his face toward him. In the darkness he could only see the glint of one eye.
“Do we go now?” Rudy asked.
He had never been in trouble with the law before, and the stress of running and hiding felt almost worse than his fate under the hand of his abusive father. Tony on the other hand seemed to take it all in stride. He always had a plan, quick witted, and over the last day had been able to out talk and out maneuver any obstacle that had threatened.
He had killed someone earlier in the day for no good reason. That made Tony all the more dangerous. The last thing he wanted was to be in the middle of a gun fight between Tony and the cops. He and Natalie could be killed in the crossfire, so, the longer that confrontation could be avoided the better.
Tony turned his head back to face the road ahead and said, “No.”
Rudy looked back towards Natalie. He couldn’t see her in the gloom, so he pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and fell silent.
Karl steered his cruiser through the open gate of Pair-A-Dice. Its headlights cast upon two men standing on the sidewalk about midway down a rundown one story building. The room door stood open behind them. As he opened the driver’s door, Amos pulled in beside him and stopped in the middle of the lot.
“Did someone report a shooting?” Karl asked, as he exited his cruiser.
“That would be me,” a stocky man who wore tan sweats said, “I’m Benjamin.”
“Deputy Krusher and this is Deputy Garrett,” Karl said and waved toward his partner who had just passed around the front of Karl’s cruiser. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“Deputy Krusher, they’re getting away,” Benjamin said, and pointed toward the highway.
“We understand the suspects have left the premises,” Amos said as he joined the three men at the sidewalk, “but we need to do some investigating before we just start chasing suspects. We’re going to need to look around while you tell us what you know. Then we’ll take the appropriate actions.
“Were they guests at the motel?” he continued.
“Yes,” the second man said. He was dressed in pajama bottoms and had a heavy jacket over his torso. “This was their room.”
“I see, and you are …?” Karl asked.
“Bob Johnson, I own this motel.”
Karl took another quick scan around the place Bob called home. He felt like the least he should do was to apologize to him for having to live in a dump like this. But he just said, “I see.”
_____
©
Jearl Rugh 2012
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