I looked up for confirmation.
At first I couldn’t see anything, but as the sound grew louder, I actually thought the plane might be about to crash right on top of me.
When I finally caught sight of it again, it was headed down fast at an angle that left little doubt it was about to crash.
Another moment and I heard what sounded like the plane scraping across the tops of trees, but was momentarily distracted by a noise behind me.
As I started to turn, I was hit in the back of the head by a heavy object swung with furious force.
I lost consciousness before I hit the ground.
Chapter Three
W
hen I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the van.
I scrambled to my feet, the back of my head throbbing, wondering how long I had been out.
Not long from the look of things.
Though it was difficult to judge on such an overcast day, it didn’t seem to be much later.
Glancing around for my assailant, I made my way over to the van.
Kent Murphy, the middle-aged transport officer, was slumped in the driver’s seat unconscious, his light brown CO shirt soaked with blood.
The passenger seat and the back of the van were empty.
I carefully opened the door and felt for a pulse.
He had one. Weak, but there.
I reached across him, getting blood on my shirt, grabbed the mic, and radioed the institution, describing for them the situation as best I could with the few 10-codes I knew. I wasn’t sure they understood everything, but 10-20, 10-33, and 10-71 let them know where I was, that it was an emergency, and to send an ambulance.
I couldn’t decide if I should move Kent, so left him as he was.
It should take the ambulance less than ten minutes to arrive. While waiting, I went around to the other side of the van.
Both the front and side doors were closed and the side door was still padlocked, which meant the inmate being transported should still be inside. Cupping my hands around my face, I pressed up against the glass to search the back of the van. All the seats were empty. Moving around and looking from various angles, I could see that the floorboard was too.
It was possible there had never actually been an inmate inside. Kent could have been returning from dropping one off or on his way to pick one up—but then who hit me in the back of the head?
I was on my way around the van to check on Kent again when I heard the noise.
It sounded like faint moaning, and it was coming from the woods out from the passenger side of the van. Stepping over thick undergrowth and fallen branches, and hoping I wouldn’t step on a rattlesnake, I began to move in the direction of the sound.
The woods were still, the only movement raindrops falling from treetops. Crickets, convinced by the dark storm clouds that it was night, chirped loudly, but the sky was clearing up, the light beneath the pines slowly increasing.
It didn’t take long to find him.
Lying facedown, his blue inmate uniform wet, a white guy with reddish-blond hair with traces of blood in it was moving slightly and moaning, as if experiencing a bad dream.
I was really confused now.
I had expected to find an officer, not an inmate. How did he get out of the locked van? Who hit him on the back of the head? The same person who hit me? But why? I had figured it was an inmate trying to escape. And maybe it was. Maybe there were two or more. But that didn’t explain how they got out of the locked van. And why leave one behind? Perhaps he wanted to stay. An inmate with a low custody level and very little time left on his sentence had no reason to run. And with no cuffs or leg irons, it was likely he was a low custody, little time, work camp inmate. Maybe the other inmate or inmates knocked him out to keep him quiet for their escape. Maybe he tried to stop them.
Hearing sirens out on the highway, I turned to watch for their approach.
Dad arrived first. Alone in his truck.
“John,” Dad yelled.
He was followed by two of his deputies, an ambulance, and several officers from the prison.
“Over here,” I yelled back. “Kent Murphy’s in the van. He’s in bad shape. Tell them to treat him first. And I’ve got an inmate down over here who needs to be looked at.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Anyone else?”
“Be careful,” I said. “Somebody whacked me on the back of the head. Maybe this guy too.”
Taking charge, Dad began giving orders, directing his deputies to sweep the area, the EMTs to treat Kent, and the correctional officers to find out exactly who had been in the van.
A few moments later, Dad and I were leaning against his vehicle while the EMTs worked on Kent and the inmate, while the correctional officers and deputies searched the woods around us.
If all the signs on the side of the road didn’t announce that it was an election year, the way Dad was dressed would. Ordinarily a casually dressed sheriff, Jack Jordan, for the past several months, and foreseeable future, was wearing blazers and ties—and judging from how stylish he looked, I’d guess he had a new girlfriend helping him shop.
“What happened?” he asked.
I told him, pressing the ice pack one of the EMTs gave me to the growing knot on the back of my head as I did.
“How bad’s your truck?” he asked.
“Totaled,” I said.
“It was time for a new one anyway.”
“It’s been time,” I said. “That was never the issue.”
His expression let me know he wondered what the issue was. Though he rarely said much about it, Dad did not approve of a lot of what I did—spending what little money I made on books and helping AA buddies instead of buying decent transportation and living accommodations, being a chaplain instead of a cop, and for generally being different from him in nearly every way.
“How goes the campaign?” I asked.
He shook his head and frowned. “Not good.”
After several decades of running for reelection with little or no opposition, there were nearly ten men in the race for sheriff this time. I wasn’t sure why—I had little use for politics, local or otherwise—but I knew enough to know that so many candidates meant one thing. The perception was Dad was vulnerable.
“You got a new girlfriend?” I asked.
“Who told you that?”
“Just wondered.”
I could see it dawning on him. He looked down at what he was wearing and smiled appreciatively.
A car pulled up behind the last vehicle, and the OIC from the prison jumped out and ran over to us. Captain Tom McGlon was on the young side of middle age, with strawberry-blond hair and fair skin with a reddish hue and a light dusting of pale freckles.
“Got confirmation,” he said. “Two transport officers—Kent Murphy and Allen Pettis—and one work camp inmate were in the van.”
I took off running toward the inmate.
“What is it?” Dad asked.
He and Tom fell in right behind me.
“You know what Pettis looks like?” I asked Tom.
“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”
“Because,” I said, “the man in the inmate uniform might be him.”
Chapter Four
W
ith Kent Murphy on his way to the hospital, the recently revived Allen Pettis, still wearing the inmate uniform, was about to tell us what had happened.
I had discarded my ice pack, but he still held his tightly against the back of his head.
“I think he hit me harder than he hit you, Chaplain,” he said.
“More likely his head’s harder,” Tom McGlon said. “What happened?”
“Kent and me was takin’ a inmate back to the work camp. He’d been at the main unit for medical. We didn’t have him cuffed or nothin’.”
Like many of the people in Pottersville, Allen Pettis wasn’t nearly as ignorant or uneducated as he sounded. He simply had poor grammar—like so many of the teachers who taught him in school.
“He never gave us any trouble before,” Pettis continued. “He was a good inmate. Hell, he can’t have much time left.”
“I pulled his file before I came over,” Tom said. “He’s minimum custody and got less than three months left on his sentence. He’s in on a small non-violent drug charge.”
“Well he’s picked up a few new tricks since he’s been inside,” Pettis said, rubbing his head.
“I’ve got to get the dogs out here,” Tom said, looking around the woods at the COs and deputies searching the area.
“Anyway,” Pettis continued, “they’s a section of plexiglass missin’ from the cage in the van. It’s right behind the driver’s seat. The metal mesh is there, but the plexiglass don’t reach all the way.” Looking up at Tom, he added, “I told maintenance about it just a few days ago.” He then paused long enough to shake his head before he continued. “We’s drivin’ down the highway, not payin’ attention to much of nothin’, when the inmate slipped a piece of wire through the cage and around Kent’s neck and began to choke him. He told him to pull off the road and for me to unlock the van and let him out or he’d kill him. Murphy lost control and we wound up out here. The wreck knocked Kent unconscious, but the inmate was still going to kill him if I didn’t let him out, so I unlocked the door, thinkin’ I could jump him when he come out, but he got the better of me. I’m sorry. I … I should’ve … but I couldn’t let Kent die. I done the best I could.”
“Why the hell would an inmate with so little time left escape now?” Tom asked.
“You just can’t never tell about no damn inmate,” Pettis said. “If they had any sense they wouldn’t be in prison in the first place.”
“Could be any number of reasons,” I said, “but news he got at his medical appointment is probably a good place to start.”
Tom snatched the radio off his belt and pressed the call button. When the control room responded, he said. “Where the hell’s my K-9 officer?”
“We’re trying to locate him now, sir,” the control room sergeant said. “He’s not answering his cell phone or pages.”
“He’s probably with search and rescue on the river,” Dad said. “That’s where Jake is.”
That reminded me of what I saw right before I was knocked out. I had forgotten until now.
“Did the plane go into the river?” I asked.
“What plane?” Dad asked.
“Just before I was knocked out,” I said. “There was a plane overhead. I thought it might be crashing.”
“They’re doing training exercises. Think we’d’ve heard by now if there was a plane crash.”
“I could have sworn it was going to crash,” I said.
“You think you can get Jake on the radio?” Tom said to Dad.
He nodded.
“Come on,” Dad then said to me. “Let’s ride over to the landing and see if we can find ’em. I’ll radio Jake on the way.” He looked at Tom. “In the meantime, I’ll get some more men out here to help search. See if you can too.”
Chapter Five
D
ad’s truck was immaculate inside and out, except for the fresh mud on the tires, fenders, and quarter panels, and I knew it was because inmates from the jail cleaned it daily. Perhaps because of the extra scrutiny that comes in an election year, there was nothing personal in the vehicle except for the stacks of campaign cards, brochures, and door hangers in the backseat.
“How’s your mother?” he asked.
Though they had been divorced longer than they were together, he still always asked me about her—especially since she had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver.
I shook my head. “Doesn’t have much longer.”
“You’ve been saying that a while now.”
“She’s lasted a lot longer than any of us thought she would—including her doctor,” I said, “but …”
Mom was hanging on for some reason. I just didn’t know what it was. I suspected it had to do with Jake not being ready or her holding out hope that she might be reconciled with my sister Nancy before she died.
“Need to go by and see her,” he said.
I loved my dad, respected him in a lot of ways, but I couldn’t help but wonder if part of the reason for his visit was to take her an absentee ballot. He knew she would sign it. She’d do anything for him—anything but the one thing he wanted her to. She wouldn’t stop drinking. Not even for him.
“You got any sense how the prison will vote?”
I shook my head.
Of all the different things my dad was, I liked the politician the least.
“Wish we could find out,” he said.
The prison vote, like the black vote or the women’s vote, was not monolithic, had never been a solid block, but that didn’t keep many politicians from believing it was. No one candidate would get the entire prison vote—not even the correctional officer who was running.
“The ones who say anything are going to act like they’re for you to my face,” I said, “but you can’t go on that.”
He nodded. “I know.”
“You really think it’s going to be that close?” I asked.