No Beast So Fierce (35 page)

In odd moments when I wasn't trying to think of what to do, or when I wasn't thinking of something specific, recollection of the carnage instantly filled the vacuum. I understood why men seek oblivion in alcohol. I saw Jerry writhing in the mud of his blood, the policeman's eyes, Willy's head bouncing on the desert, sightless eyes flashing in the moonlight. The images were sharper than when they happened, for then my sensibilities had been blunted by fear and rage. There was no remorse. I tried to feel that and couldn't. But I felt the kind of nausea one feels seeing the butcher slice the hog's throat.

By nightfall, still bothered by the images, still unable to decide what to do next, I was cursing inwardly. Allison's feelings were hurt by my withdrawal. She was also under the strain of being hunted, and nothing in her background had prepared her for it. Her romantic fantasies were fraying at the edges.

When we went to bed early, for now I was drained of energy, I also had the need for touch and warmth and reached for her. She whimpered and we made love. Afterward, her head resting on my chest, her leg wrapped around mine, her finger dawdled with the hair on my stomach.

“What would happen if you gave yourself up?” she asked.

“If I got to jail alive they'd give me due process of law, and after a few years of getting fat on the row I'd get cyanide socked to me.”

“How can they prove it was you? You wore a mask.”

“Oh, they'll get witnesses. Aaron might turn over if they offer him his life. Maybe Carol wants revenge. Maybe even Mary. What about her kids? They can testify to that trip. Even you might be on the witness stand. If they can't do it any other way, they might use perjury. They do that too.”

“Do you really think I'd turn against you?” She was angry.

“You wouldn't want to … but you've never spent a single night in jail, so there's no way to say what you'd do after three months, especially if they offered you immunity on one hand and five years in prison on the other.”

“Would you surrender if they agreed not to give you the death penalty?”

“I could've done that before I started shooting.” I chucked her under the chin. “I'd accept probation. That's all.” Suicide crossed my mind—surrender never.

“But they'll get you, won't they?”

“Yeah, most likely … but they won't get you. I don't think they know who you are. I'm sending you home to Kentucky in a few days. You're going to forget you ever saw L.A. If the heat should find you, don't say a fucking thing, not one word. Do what I said before, keep asking for a lawyer. Don't even try to lie. You don't have to prove a thing. They have to prove you helped me, and that you knew.”

“Why can't I come with you?”

“Because I'm going to get caught. Anyway, I don't even know where I'm going.”

“If you get away will you send for me?”

“Sure, baby.” I sugarcoated the lie by gently cupping a bare breast and then kissing the nipple.

“Are we going across the border?”

“At Tijuana! They'll be using my picture for wallpaper there.”

“I'm trying to help. I want to help.”

“Shhh. Go to sleep.”

“I really …”

“Shhh.”

She was quiet, closed her eyes. Perhaps she slept. I knew my only chance was to escape the continent, reach somewhere still unclaimed by computers. My destination had to be thousands of miles farther than Mexico. How to get wherever I was going was another question. That was what gnawed at me. Still without a plan, I fell into a dreamless sleep.

Allison wakened me, her eyes wide, cheeks pale, mouth quivering with emotion. “They found the man in the desert,” she said. The abhorrence in her voice had physical impact. My stomach sagged. I started to ask “What man?” as a reflexive lie to collect my thoughts.

Instead I asked, “Where'd you hear the news?”

“On television. It's over now.”

“When was it?”

“They found him yesterday—but they didn't know who he was right away.”

It was unbelievable. Nobody would wander from the highway at such a desolate spot—not so soon. Six months was more reasonable than six hours.

Allison sensed my thoughts, or wanted to add to the horror: “The buzzards …”

The picture came instantly vivid—the usually solitary scavenger birds gathering from miles, soaring in circles. They flocked that way when something big had died, a cow or a horse. A motorist's curiosity had been aroused.

Allison had moved away from me. Despite my confusion as I digested the revelation, I could feel her loathing toward me. “What else did the news say?”

“That you killed him to get revenge on his wife.”

“His wife!” Another revelation, the lightning realization that it was Selma, not Willy, who'd told the police. I saw it now. Willy had gone back in the house, had been gone for several minutes, and he'd confided in his wife, probably in response to her querulous questions. When he was taken in for the nalline testing, it was Selma who'd gone and bargained. “But he confessed,” I muttered. It was no balm to conscience. I'd forced the confession, a false confession.

“What are you?” Allison whispered huskily. “My God!”

“Dummy up and get off my back,” I said. “I've gotta think.”

“You must kill without feeling anything, like an animal. You'd just done that when you …”

“Shut the fuck up, bitch … And get the fuck outta here.” Her accusations were meaningless as the flapping wings of a captured dove. When she started to say something else, I snarled a curse and stood up, raising a hand threateningly. She cowered and kept quiet, then slipped from the room.

Beyond the window the storm had broken and the city was again in the sun, though wind danced with cloud remnants and pools glistened on flat rooftops. The crystalline beauty increased my desperation and rage. Gone were my friends, one wrongly by my own hand. Allison was no longer to be trusted. Behind was the wasteland; ahead lay oblivion. Riotous imagination conjured images of the hunters closing on me, lurking behind automobiles, creeping down the hallway to the suite. The image hypnotized, and if I wallowed in fear too long I'd be unable to act. I felt helpless and lonely.

Pacing the room, I shook off the moribund mood, brought my thoughts back to pragmatic thoughts of what to do and what the situation was, on how to make the odds better that I'd live a little longer.

The body would tell them I'd been in the desert, and San Diego was a logical place to search for me. Soon they'd find the automobile, and though they'd speculate that I'd flown out of town, they'd be diligent in checking motels and hotels. They might be in the lobby now.

Mexico was out of the question. There'd be someone at the border stations doing nothing else but watching for me. Highways east crossed the desert, highways so empty that an automobile stood out like a cockroach on a porcelain bathtub. West was the Pacific Ocean. The only way to go was north along the coast toward Los Angeles, which would have me going back toward where I'd fled from, running in circles. I disliked it but had no choice. The highway along the coast had towns every few miles, and beach houses between them. It was heavily traveled. The evening rush hour was the time to leave.

What about Allison? She was in the bathroom. I could hear the shower running. Her attitude was understandable. The veil had been torn from her eyes. She'd created an image of me instead of seeing the truth. It wasn't my fault. I hadn't confided in her, but I hadn't lied and deceived her either. The buzzards eating Willy had rudely given her a new perspective. Now she saw me as an unmitigated monster.

My attitude toward her had changed the moment hers toward me had changed. Was she a threat? Was she thinking of doing the “decent” thing? Suddenly, as if a knife was plunged through my brain, I saw that in the background of my speculations I was considering another murder. Revulsion came up. Killing her if she was really against me was a matter of survival, but to kill her because she might be against me was a madman's action. To do that would be to lose respect for myself in my own eyes. She wasn't overjoyed about murder, but I couldn't expect her to reach my view where killing was easy.

Danger or not, ally or captive, she was a handicap—and she had to go with me. I couldn't leave her behind. How long could I keep someone untrustworthy near me?

I began preparations to leave the hotel.

Speeding up the coast highway through orange dusk and heavy traffic, the thought came that my whole life was spent either being locked in a tiny cell or rushing headlong to nowhere.

Allison refused to speak except in monosyllables, so the ride was silent. It was just as well, for I had nothing to say that she could possibly understand—or accept. What sustained me in my own eyes could be understood only by another criminal. She did notice that I was watching her closely when we walked out to the car. She knew she was as much a captive as an accomplice.

By 9:00
P.M.
the car was speeding through Santa Ana. Downtown Los Angeles was fifteen minutes away. The hourly bulletin on the manhunt changed. The search was now concentrated in San Diego and Tijuana, and the Mexican authorities were cooperating. No mention was made of the abandoned car, but it was unnecessary. I knew they'd found it. I grinned, knowing I'd made the right move at the right moment and could call my enemies fools. Allison understood my smile.

“They can make a thousand goofs,” she said. “You can't make one.”

“I thought you wanted me to get away.”

She shrugged apathetically, curled her legs beneath her, rested her head on the doorframe and closed her eyes.

Energized by forty grains of benzedrine, I was alert, keyed up. We swung through the interchange ramps and turned east toward U.S. 66. By dawn, if nothing went wrong, we'd be out of California. As long as I closed my mind to anything but driving and the sensation of speed and power I felt actually good, full of a drug-induced glow. I didn't think of destination. Speed and distance were all that mattered now. If I got a thousand miles from California I could look at the chessboard and make a decision.

Dawn, Flagstaff, Arizona, and the need for gas all arrived about the same time. The sky was overcast. The desert's flamboyant colors were dulled to pewter. It was cold as a refrigerator. Nipping tendrils of icy air seeped through cracks and struggled with the heater.

Allison was still silent, arms folded across her chest, and hands tucked into armpits. Her face was puffed from the uncomfortable sleep. A crease of red was along her right cheek from the door-frame. Her clothes—stretch pants and rough sweater, chosen for hard wear—still looked presentable. I wanted her to put on makeup. The way she looked might arouse curious glances somewhere along the line.

“I'm stopping for gas. Go to the women's room and fix yourself up.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“You can get an asskicking, if that's what you want—and you're asking for it with that sarcasm. You bought a hand in this. I tried to run you off. Now keep your mouth shut … or at least off me.”

“You didn't used to talk like that.”

“Times change … People change.”

She flushed and was silent.

A gas station appeared and I swerved into its driveway too swiftly, tires skidding. It was an old station, yellow and faded orange, gravel worn to ruts around the pumps. A huge pile of used tires was along a fence and there was an overflowing garage with a stepdown pit rather than a hydraulic lift. I'd turned into it without looking it over. I slipped the safety off the Browning and moved it from the seat to my waistband, zipping my windbreaker over the butt.

The man who came from the office, carefully shutting the door to preserve the warmth, was a caricature of a cowboy. He wore faded jeans, an old sheepskin coat, worn cowboy boots. The lean six-and-a-half-foot figure was topped by a wide-brimmed Stetson dappled with sweatstains. He was in his forties.

The freezing cold hit me as I got out. My breath turned to vapor.

“Fill up?” the man asked.

“Yeah … and check everything. We've got a long haul.”

“Comin' from Californy ya'll be needin' anta freeze.”

“Put it in. Where's your restrooms? My wife needs to freshen up.”

“'Roun' thar. Man's side is kinda raunchy. If ya'll gotta loose your bladder better wait'n use the lady's.”

While the cowboy pumped gas, I got Allison from the car. “Go round back and straighten yourself up.”

She gathered her cosmetic case. “Aren't you coming to watch me? Make sure I don't run away?”

“You'll have to run across an open field. It's a hundred yards. I can blow a hole in your ass.”

“You'd do it, too, wouldn't you?”

Shaking my head in disgust, I waved her away. As she went behind the building, the cowboy, who was bent over the open hood, glanced over his shoulder at her swaying backside in the tight pants. It did look good—but I was thinking of kicking her in it. She'd turned into a quarrelsome bitch.

“Dry as a bone,” the cowboy said, waving the dip stick.

“Shit! Just had an oil change yesterday.”

“Damn sure dry now.” He kneeled and peered beneath the car; then crooked a finger. I squatted and looked. Oil was dripping to the ground slowly but steadily. The underframe was coated with it.

“Looks like a broke seal.”

“I can't wait to get it fixed.”

“Looks like you're throwin' a quart ever' hunnerd or so. Ya'll might take a case of cheap stuff and pour in a quart ever' so often. At'll get ya where yar goin'.”

“Good idea. Put it in the back seat.”

He poured the antifreeze and got the oil. Allison had bought a lemon. I stamped my feet and watched the building for her, vaguely worried that she might try to sneak away. If she did—and went to the authorities—I'd be trapped in open desert.