CRIME THRILLERS-A Box Set (36 page)

He hunched forward and drove.

#

"Losing him!"

Sully clenched his teeth until his jaws hurt and tried to ignore Carla's frenzied dialogue. He knew this would happen, but he wasn't ready for it, not yet. He pushed the Cadillac, but Carla's presence kept him from ramming the accelerator to the floor. That meant the bastard won, but Sully wouldn't let Carla wind up a piece of meat squashed inside a ton of metal.

"Can't you catch him?" she yelled. "Goddamnit, Sully, he's getting away."

The taillights of the Monte Carlo topped a hill, sank out of sight. When they topped the same hill, the red lights had disappeared. Sully lifted his foot from the gas. "You see him turn?"

"No!"

Sully touched the brake. He glanced in the rear view. He thought he detected headlights in the woods, then they were gone. Might as well have been fireflies or swamp gas. Hell, why did he think he could tail a car?

He braked again, pulled onto the shoulder, made a U-turn.

"Did he turn off? Is he back there?"

"Get the gun ready, Carla."

She did as she was told, her breathing raspy in the quiet of the car.

At the bottom of the hill he found a dirt road leading through pine stands. He took it.

"I don't see him," she said, leaning forward in the seat, squinting through the windshield.

"He's long gone if he took this road. All we can do is follow, hope we catch him."

They drove for half an hour without seeing a light. The dirt road was devoid of houses, side roads, and turnarounds. The woods grew thicker, crowding the dirt road. Branches scraped the car's side windows, setting Sully's teeth on edge, but he didn't slow his speed. Carla had not spoken. She clicked the cylinder of the revolver in and out, in and out. It didn't bother Sully, let her work the gun. If they found Lansing, it would be Carla who would use it. He kept the vision of flayed skin in his thoughts and drove through ruts, potholes, across fallen dead limbs. The undercarriage of the Caddy thumped like noisy hell.

A sixth sense told him they had lost the quarry. Carla never should have gone to his table in the restaurant, never should have tipped her hand and let him know she had the gun. He hoped they would find Lansing tonight and get it over with. He wanted it to happen in the dark. He wanted the moon to be the only witness.

CHAPTER 5

Lansing sat cleaning his fingernails with the sharp tip of the switchblade. He closed the knife with an automatic snap when he saw the Caddy pass by. When it crossed over the narrow wooden bridge and was lost from view, he started the Monte Carlo and drove carefully between the trees onto the road in the opposite direction. He punched it, laughed at the feeling of freedom flooding through him.

He had his plan worked out now. He even understood what it was about the girl that drew him to her so. In the courtroom he had not heard her speak, had never felt the blast of her intense hatred the way he had in the restaurant. She thrilled him, made goose pimples break out on his arms. She was dangerous and strong. She reminded him of the woman who had been his first adversary, his first victim. The woman he'd killed when he was twelve years old. How could he leave Carla behind and disappear from her life?

Threatening him. A punk kid threatening
him
. And Sully revving the engine, his stare smoldering with the primitive killing urge to put the car in gear with the gas to the floorboard. Sully needed another lesson. They were too cocky, the two of them. They thought revenge was a contractual right handed down from God. Well, he'd show them how wrong they were. He would turn the hunters into the hunted. It was the kind of twist he loved. He had a plan.

But Sully and Carla could wait. Tonight he needed a place to stay, money, a different vehicle. He gave up on the idea of robbing a gas station and heading for Florida. A secluded farmhouse would do just fine.

#

They were on another paved farm road somewhere in south Georgia. Sully did not know precisely where he was. He had been raised in these parts, but it was years ago as a teenager when he had last roamed the back roads.

He drove with the windows down. The night air was cool, smelling of dew-damp grass, overturned earth in the newly planted fields, and wildflowers. He had his mind and his driving on autopilot. For a while he had damned himself a hundredfold for being one ace stupid jerk. Mike was right, how was he going to chase a killer? He had lost the Monte Carlo. He still looked for it, but it was useless now. Lansing had vanished.

My God, being the owner of a hardware store in Jamison, Georgia did not prepare him for high-speed chases down back roads. He had not been in the military, because of one deaf ear. He had not traveled outside the South. He was a high school graduate, a rather skillful manager of his store, a husband,(a widower, a
widower
, he corrected himself with a stab to his heart), a father figure and friend to Carla. All added up he was an inexperienced man with a soul swamped by grief and helplessness.

There was but one advantage he had over Lansing. He was a man who had lost someone he treasured, a man woefully wronged, and he still had Carla to protect. He had reason. He had his sanity. Right now putting his mind on automatic was a reasonable, sane thing to do.

"He really lost us, didn't he?" Carla asked. She had slumped down in the seat to sulk. "I had him in the restaurant and let him go. I shouldn't have."

Sully glanced over to her. "What could you have done? Shot him in cold blood? We agreed that's stupid. We're not like him, Carla. We can't let him turn us into killers."

"It might be worth it," she whispered.

"It wouldn't!"

"But we lost him, Sully. Now he can go on killing and mutilating and..."

"Don't give up yet. Keep watching for his car. I'll drive for a while longer. If we can't find him, we'll go home."

"We won't find him. He won't let us. He might have turned back for the Florida line already."

Sully kept his thoughts to himself and drove on, scanning the dark driveways for Lansing's car. He did not believe Lansing had gone far. Not to Florida. Maybe not out of the county. He was nearby, yet unattainable. He
felt
him in the air as if the three of them were riding in the car together and Lansing was an invisible passenger.

#

A porch light came on, the yellow square illuminating unpainted boards of a slanting porch. Lansing killed the engine, doused the headlights. A skinny mongrel dog ran up to his door and barked at the open window.

A screen door opened and a thin, bald old man stepped out. He wore red long-johns and unlaced high-topped black boots. He held a flashlight in a shaky hand.

"Howdy, what's the trouble?" he called.

"Need to use a phone." Lansing approached the porch, the snarling dog on his heels.

"Got no phone, mister. There's one down at Doris's house, 'bout four miles that way." He pointed with the flashlight down the gravel drive and back to the highway.

Lansing moved so unexpectedly the old man stumbled backward into the screen. "See this knife? I'm going to cut your throat unless you let me inside. No fuss, just wake the missus and get everyone out of bed."

The old man trembled, his gaze skittering back and forth from the knife to the hollow shadowed face of the stranger.

"Hey, now..."

"Inside!" Lansing pushed him through the screen door, the rusty wire giving, the bracing wood splintering on impact. The mongrel jumped to the porch and snapped the air at Lansing's ankles. The old man scooted along the floor on his butt away from the intruder. A woman in a long flower-print cotton nightgown appeared in a doorway rubbing watery, sleep-filled eyes.

"What is it, Donald?"

"Come on in, lady." To the old man Lansing asked, "Who else is here?"

"No...nobody---"

"Bring me some rope, lady," he said quietly. "It's sleepy-bye time."

Lansing took the old man into the kitchen first after he had tied the old woman's hands and pushed her down on the rat-brown sofa. She wept openly, not bothering to soften her cries for pity that went unanswered.

When the old man began to yell, his wife got to her feet and staggered toward the kitchen. She ran like a penguin, duck-footed little steps that swished along the worn linoleum floor covering. At the door she screamed and fainted when she saw the blood, the awful, awful blood of her husband.

The old man's voice rose and fell, rose and fell. He had confessed where his money was hidden. He had given Lansing the keys to his decrepit white Ford pickup truck. He had slipped in his own bodily fluids and fallen to the floor to plead for merry.

After an interminable time Lansing appeared with the dripping switchblade in his hand. He then dragged the unconscious old lady into the kitchen to lie beside her husband. She did not scream on the first knife plunge. She gurgled, opened her faded blue eyes to accuse him, before dying peacefully.

A long time passed, minutes, hours, Lansing could not recall how long he had been dealing out death to the elderly couple. He was covered with their lifeblood. The smell was at once familiar, comforting, and devastating. It was Frannie's smell when she lay on the bedroom floor. It was the smell of a slaughterhouse, and it made Lansing feel larger than life, a giant walking the earth.

He disappeared into the bowels of the silent house. Soon he had the shower water running and began to sing some inconsequential tune from the radio. He reappeared buck naked and clean. He dried his hair with a threadbare towel. There was a scar across the front of his chest, a small memento from one of his childhood foster parents.

He grabbed a brown and yellow knitted afghan from the sofa back and shook it out. He switched off the light and lay down, pulling the afghan over his nakedness. He heard water dripping in the house somewhere. Outside a hoot owl wanted to know
whoooo
. The quieted dog
tick-ticked
into the kitchen and slurped the residue leaking from the old man and old woman.

Lansing stared into the dark room and listened to the sounds until he fell asleep hoping to dream of Carla and Sully bound and vulnerable beneath the silver steel in his hand.

Just before daybreak a nightmare slipped through the dark and insinuated itself into Lansing's brain. He was ten years old and had been placed in yet another home. He had done something wrong. He always did something wrong. This time he didn't know what it was, but no matter, his list of unpunished sins were eternal.

The old bitch had his hand extended over an open flame burner of a gas stove.

"Enough?" she kept asking. "Enough?"

While he concentrated his entire existence on the dancing blue and orange tongues of flame, his palm blistered, the blisters cooked, broke open, were crisply fried.

He didn't care. He didn't care if she boiled him in hog lard.
He'd get her
. He'd think of the worst possible torture man might ever endure and then he'd get her. Instead of tears, his eyes leaked darkness and the promise of future death...

Hours later he woke with a start from a similar nightmare and dumped the afghan to the floor. His palms burned and he wanted to tell her, he wanted to admit, he wanted to confess it was enough,
enough
.

His vision adjusted, his adrenalin spurt trickled to a slow stream that nevertheless alerted all his senses. Early morning light the color of thin gruel filtered through the door and windows. Fog drifted in eddies just above the jewel-dewed grass outdoors. Had he forgotten something? What was wrong? It was the old nightmare, yes, but it was something else too. He expected someone to be watching him. He had felt eyes trained on his every move as he tussled with the afghan in his sleep.

He dived into action, a dynamo of flashing energy. He was dressed and out the door within three minutes. He rushed to the truck and started it after numerous attempts. He made a turn in the bare yard and barreled down the lane to the blacktop. He had to hide. He had to go to ground. If he had been caught with his victims, he would never have been able to carry out his plan.

As the sun rose the air turned humid and dense. Distance piled up between him and the farmhouse, this knowledge having a calming effect on his nerves. He was headed for Burdock Mountain, for home. Later, he would go back to Jamison, Georgia, and unfinished business.

He hummed a reckless, made-up tune while he drove. Let them find his car and know he killed the old farts. It did not matter how much the authorities wanted him. Let them want.

The terrain grew hilly and forest encroached on the roadsides with thicker, wilder growth. Tangled honeysuckle vines wound around wire fences and the trunks of trees, their pale yellow blooms little trumpets of springtime. The ground fog lifted, clouds parted, and the sun sprayed the countryside with gold. It was a beautiful summer day. Absolutely beautiful.

CHAPTER 6

Sully woke to late morning sun bathing his face in heat. He lay for minutes thinking about Martin Lansing. It could be a sign he and Carla lost sight of the car last night. As difficult as it was to consider, perhaps they were going to have to let him go. The police could not hold the man. Evidence could not be gathered against him. During the trial, Mike Dalamas had searched past records and discovered Lansing was a suspect in several murders across various states. He was restrained from using the information in Frannie's case, however, since "suspect" did not translate to "perpetrator." Not that the information could have done a whit of good. Lansing's trial was thrown out because of the illegal search for the weapon anyway.

Sully sat up and stretched, eyes closed, face turned to the full sun. Carla's insistent knock came on his door.

"Sully, come out here. There's a news broadcast on WRAF. I think it's Lansing."

Lansing
? Hadn't he left the state? Had he murdered again? Dear Jesus, would it never end, never, never end?

He threw on a robe and rushed into the den. Carla stood over the radio, hands on her hips, lips pursed. "Sshhh, they're repeating the bulletin."

The announcer was saying, "...in the driveway the highway patrol found a late model green Monte Carlo registered to a man by the name of Martin Lansing. Lansing was just freed yesterday from the Markum County Courthouse on charges of murdering Francine Torrance of Jamison, Georgia. The murder weapon in that case, a switchblade knife, had been confiscated illegally in the initial search of the suspect. It is believed Mr. and Mrs. Donald Bunsun were robbed and killed last night around midnight. A statewide search has been undertaken to locate the Bunsun's missing white 1980 Ford pickup truck, thought to have been stolen by their killer..."