Eleven Hours (20 page)

Scott was on the phone, barking orders, yelling at the Waco cops for not sending the SWAT team when he needed them. He was now calling the field office in Abilene—for there was none in San Angelo—and ordering as many SWAT men as possible to remain on standby. He also called Raul and asked him to send Dallas men to Abilene. Then he called San Angelo police headquarters. And Waco again, requisitioning all the available helicopters in the area to fly over every major road from Center City to El Paso looking for the missing patrol car.

Rich asked how the SWAT team were getting to San Angelo. Were they flying?

“Flying? No, only the President flies. They have their equipment in the trunk of their cars. Like I did. They're driving.”

“Oh my God, driving!” Rich exclaimed. “Why don't they just take a bike or jog? They're never going to get there in time.”

“Rich, they'll be in San Angelo in an hour.”

Rich waited until Scott was finished, and then said, “Don't you guys have a jet or something?”

“Yeah, in Quantico. The hostage rescue team is there, and they're ready to help us instantly. But frankly … if we can't do it with the three hundred or so SWAT guys we have here in Texas, then I just don't know. To apprehend one man … I mean, really.”

They flew in relative silence under the numbing din of the helicopter.

After ten minutes in the air, Rich said, “What are we going to do, Scott?”

Scott said nothing.

Rich's head fell back against the seat.

“We are so ignorant,” he said. “We know nothing. If we knew more about him, we would know more about what he's planning, where he's going. It's getting dark soon. We'll never find them in the dark.” He knew he sounded desperate. “If this man has a plan, he will have a whole night to execute it. If he has no plan, he will have nine hours of night to drive. Six hundred miles. He'll be in Arizona in that police car.”

“No,” Scott said. “Not in that police car. It's a patrol car. He won't get out of Texas in it. And if he does, he'll be easier to spot than a palm tree in Canada.”

Rich fell silent. Scott opened his mouth to speak and then stopped. “What?” Rich said. “What is it?”

Scott was quiet.

“You don't think he's planning to leave the state?”

Slowly, Scott shook his head. “I don't think he's planning to leave the state in that car.”

“Is that good or bad?” Rich turned to Scott and studied his face. He didn't like what he saw and turned away.

Scott didn't answer, and Rich didn't press further.

After another noisy ten minutes, Rich said, “We have to find out more about him. What do we know about this man? That he lived in Garland and at the time of the kidnapping was unemployed? That's not a hell of a lot. Where is he from? Has he been to prison—”

“We don't think so. He has no criminal record. There are no fingerprints in our archives. He has never filed his taxes.”

“Never?” That was unbelievable to Rich.

“The IRS had no information on him. He was a transient worker, I think. Working for cash. Never filed a return.”

“Maybe,” said Rich, “he mistook my wife for someone else. Someone rich.”

“Could be,” said Scott tentatively. “But we know he's not acting like a man out for ransom. He's not in hiding. He's on the road as if he's on a mission. Think about it. If he wanted money, he could have stopped at any motel after he shot the gas station attendant. Called us from a pay phone, or from your cell phone. He wouldn't have tried to sell the phone. He would have used it to demand money.”

“So if it's not money, what is it?” Rich asked. “We can try to give him anything he wants.” His voice shattered against the noise of the helicopter.

Scott stared straight into the crimson sun. “I think,” he said thoughtfully, “he already has what he wants.”

7:15 P.M.

Didi and Lyle rode silently in the police car. Didi's brow throbbed. She felt her face swelling. Pretty soon my eye will close up, she thought. The pain blurred her vision. The bleeding had stopped, but that hardly made her feel better. Earlier, when the gash had been pouring blood, it hadn't hurt. Now the blood clotted, and it felt as if a hundred needles were sending sharp electric currents into her eyebrow. She couldn't keep her eye open. Placing the palm of her right hand above the eye, she tried to relieve the pressure, but it was no use.

The shadows grew longer. The sun burned deeper crimson. After driving north, Lyle made a U-turn and headed south until he reached Highway 84 again. He made a right and stayed on it until the road seemingly ended in a T, but Lyle didn't go left or right but straight across onto a barely paved, unmarked farm road. Open, flat fields, deserted road. Didi had no idea where they were. She couldn't place where they were in the state of Texas. The ground was dirt, not sand, so they couldn't have been very far west. They were somewhere on the Great Plains. The colors of Texas were sepia as the sun beat on the still countryside. Didi opened her mouth to catch some air, hoping for a water molecule to drift in and settle on her tongue.

They were still heading west. Once the sun was down, Didi knew she would have an even harder time figuring out her whereabouts. She didn't see any road signs.

The baby kicked.

I'm going to hell, she thought.

I was going to hell in a beat-up Ford station wagon. That was bad.

Then I was going to hell in a beat-up Toyota truck, and that was bad.

Now I'm speeding straight to hell in a brand-spanking-new police car. It doesn't really matter. Except this car has AC.

It's been a lifetime since I drank. That will be my hell—having a parched mouth for eternity. She touched her lips with the tips of the fingers of her right hand. Her mouth was swollen. Dried blood streaked her cracked lips. The corners and crevices were now raw wounds. She licked them, but she had no saliva left. She tried to swallow but swallowed nothing. If only she could ease the aching in her throat, the thirst aching, the fear aching, the end of life aching. Nothing.

At home it would have been almost time to start getting the girls ready for bed. She couldn't stop thinking of sitting in Reenie's big cream chair, reading her books, and at the end of every book, putting a cup of milk to her mouth and saying, “Milk?” and Irene saying, “No milk. No way. Not me.”

Now Didi was saying, yes milk, yes way, yes me.

She glanced over at Lyle. He wasn't spacing out, his eyes weren't glazed over. He had a determined look on his face. Both hands gripped the wheel. In a loosely fitting police uniform, he had never looked more sinister.

I wonder what his hell will be. What for him represents horror? What represents pain?

What does he want from me? What can I give him? Maybe if I knew—then I'd be dead. And my baby dead, too.

Her left hand rubbed the tight belly. There were too many other pains all over her body for Didi to pay attention to minor cramping. But she noticed it now, and thought, my poor belly. It needs some water and a cool shower just like the rest of me.

“Where are we going, Lyle?”

“Let's not talk anymore,” he said. “The talking part is over for now. I have to get to where we're going. I have to concentrate.”

“Lyle,” Didi said carefully. “We haven't eaten. Couldn't we stop for something?”

He laughed then. “You've got to be joking, missy,” he said.

“Maybe a drink for me, Lyle? I haven't had anything all afternoon, and I'm so thirsty.”

“You should have thought about that when you were playing all cutesy with the cop back there. ‘Oh, officer,'” he said, mimicking Didi's high voice, “‘I just cut myself, it's nothing,' and ‘oh, honey, maybe the insurance is in the car we traded.' Well, thanks to you, he's dead, and you're not getting your water.”

She turned forward to face the road.

“We can't stop anywhere,” Lyle said. “We could've before. But look at you. Look what you've made me do.” He glanced at her face. “We can't stop. It's okay. We'll be there soon.”

Didi fell quiet, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “There? Wherever ‘there' is, do you think there'll be a drink for me there?”

“I didn't think of a drink,” he said gruffly. “I didn't think our trip would take so long. Things haven't gone as smooth as I hoped.”

“Anything,” she whispered. “A sip of anything.”

“White lightning?” He smiled.

“Even that,” she said.

“Come on,” he said. “Be strong.” He reached over and patted her belly. She didn't move a muscle. “You've got to be strong for the baby.”

“You're right. Then help me. Get me some water. I'll feel so much better then.”

“I have no water here, and we can't stop,” he said sternly. “You'll just have to find strength from elsewhere.”

“I have nowhere else.”

“You're carrying a life. Seek strength from that.”

Didi felt her uterus tighten in a way that was not just distracting or unpleasant, but alarming. She thought, what is this? And waited with gripped tense hands, waited out the seconds that it took the Belly to finish the contraction. It began quietly, just another Braxton Hicks, gripping the belly, except … at the crest of the wave, what gripped the belly wasn't a Braxton Hicks. It wasn't a tummy ache or gas but a cold talon of steel that wrung out her insides as though they were a wet towel, and then when it was done, it threw the insides on the floor in a heap, and waited.

“Is everything okay?” Lyle asked.

What a strange question, thought Didi, trying to get her breath back. Is everything okay in this perverse universe you've created for us, in the universe where a nice young cop is dead and I'm heading straight to hell? “Yeah,” she said, gritting her teeth not to let a moan of pain escape. “Everything is fine.”

And then she said, “My face is hurting.”

“Well, whose fault is that, pretty Didi?” Lyle said.

“Mine, Lyle,” said Didi. “Doesn't make it hurt any less.”

He drove.

“So tell me about your wife.”

Lyle paused. “Nothing to tell.”

“Come on, something. Are we going to see her?”

“Maybe.”

She lowered her head, then tried again. “What about your baby—”

“Okay, enough now, my bologna. We're through with talking for now.”

She fell silent but couldn't bear sitting and waiting to see if she was going to get another contraction.

Didi spoke. “Lyle, do you want to know about me? I am the middle daughter of two teachers in an Episcopalian private school.”

“And I'm the only son of a housewife and a railroad worker,” said Lyle.

Didi continued, “My mother and father have been married for thirty-seven years.”

“And mine have been married for nearly thirty.” He paused. “Not happily.”

“My father retired two years ago.”

“My father is still working.”

“What about you, Lyle?” she asked. “Do you have a job?”

Pursing his lips, he said, “I'm in between jobs right now.”

“What were you doing before?”

“This and that. What were you doing before?”

Didi felt her spine tingle at his
before.

She went on as if she didn't understand him. “Before I married Rich, I was his assistant. That's how I met him. I was twenty-two.”

Lyle didn't respond.

Didi rubbed the Belly with a steady circular motion.

“How did you meet your wife?”

“I don't want to talk no more,” he said grumpily. “Put on some music if you want to.”

“I don't want music,” she said, wishing the police radio weren't lying disemboweled in the back. He shouldn't have done it. Just as he shouldn't have tried to sell her cell phone.

Wherever they were going, they should have taken the bus, she whispered to herself, and then heard him say, “Bus would have been out of the question.” Didi looked at him, startled. He smiled. “I can hear your soft thoughts, Didi.”

“Can you hear my hard thoughts, Lyle?”

“You don't have any. I feel that. You're a good person. You tried to save me with your prayers. That was brave of you. I feel connected to you. I can feel your exhaustion, your pregnant belly, your thirst. I know what you think. I can feel what you feel.”

Shaking her head slightly so as not to hurt it, Didi said, “I don't think so, Lyle. If you could feel what I feel, you wouldn't be doing this. We're here because you can't feel what I feel.”

“Oh?” He laughed softly, his features rounding out with his smile. He almost looked like a normal human being to Didi. “Oh?” he repeated. “And what should I feel for? Shopping?”

“God,” said Didi.

“Shopping,” repeated Lyle.

“If you hate shopping so much, Lyle, then what were you doing at NorthPark?”

“Looking for you.”

Didi's mind blanked. “No, really.”

“Really.” He glanced over at her. “Surprised, huh?”

“But you didn't know me,” Didi said incredulously.

“I had a feeling about you. For you,” said Lyle. “I had a feeling from when I first saw you—that you were going to mean something to my life.”

Funny, she thought, trying to quiet her heart by tapping on her chest. I had the same feeling about you at the Freshëns stand. I didn't know why but I wanted to get as far away from you as possible. I called myself paranoid and went on. That's me, the paranoid, pregnant Didi.

She was staring at him.

Lyle's gaze dimmed. “Should have followed your feeling, Desdemona,” he said to her.

“I tried, Lyle,” she said. “God knows I tried.”

They were silent. The countryside was flat, burnt, sad, thirsty.

Didi spoke. “Lyle, is it too late to ask you again to let me go? I swear, swear on my life—”