by Dan Ames
His fingers clasped the door lever and he gathered his legs beneath him, wedging his foot against the small rise between the driver's and passenger's foot spaces.
Adrenaline shot into his bloodstream as he prepared to make his move.
Chapter 53
"Bullshit! He's right here!" Hank boomed into the handset.
The voice on the other end was Rodgers Bay Police Chief Don Lenzen.
"Jesus Christ, Hank, wait until I get there. Don't shoot at him anymore. Don't do anything else!" the chief yelled back.
"Look, I saw the damn show and I'm telling you, this is the guy."
"But what if you're wrong, Hank?"
"I'm not."
"I'm rolling now, Hank. I'll be there in five minutes. Just wait for me to get there and don't do a thing."
"I'll keep him pinned down for you, Chief."
"Are you listening, Hank, don't do anyth-"
Before the chief could finish that thought, Hank Campbell's thumb slipped off the mouthpiece's switch as he saw the passenger door fly open and a blur of feet and shoulders as Mike Sharpe vaulted out of the car. He hit the shoulder and rolled into the forest on the edge of the road.
"Shit! He's running!" Hank yelled. He dropped the handset and jogged up to the car.
The woman in the back seat had blood all over her face.
"Don't worry, ma'am, the cops are on their way."
He looked closely at the woman. She was beautiful. His anger rose inside him.
"You're gonna be all right," he said, showing her the rifle.
"This sicko ain't gonna kill again," Hank said and thundered off into the brush.
Chapter 54
Mike lowered his good shoulder and crashed ahead, his thighs pumping furiously as he slipped and clawed his way through the thick forest.
It was deathly quiet in here and he knew he was making too much noise. He was playing a dangerous game. He had to lure this nutjob away from Laurie, but he couldn't let him catch up or the next bullet might not miss. He paused and heard something crashing through the brush toward him in answer.
Good. He was following.
Mike hoped all those hours in the gym would pay off. But this was different and he was still losing blood. The ground was uneven and rocky. If he wasn't careful, he could easily break an ankle.
He knew he could take solace in the fact that the guy following him was huge. The bastard had to weigh at least three hundred pounds.
Mike took a deep breath and raced forward. Now that he knew the man was following him the priority was to keep drawing him away. Sweat poured down his face, and his heart was pounding. A bluff immediately rose before him and he scurried up it quickly. His breath steadied and he began covering ground fast.
Chapter 55
Hank Campbell paused. The blood lust he had felt before was now supplanted with the stronger instinct of self-preservation.
He turned and headed back toward the Bronco.
When he thundered out of the dense thicket near the highway the first thing he spotted was the woman. Her face was still a bloody mess, and there were napkins stuck to her forehead.
She was on her hands and knees vomiting onto the dirt and gravel next to the car.
Hank had no time to stop and offer her help. His mind was busily planning the capture of the psychopath who Hank thought had pretty big balls to think he could escape in the woods.
Hank knew these woods better than anyone in the county. He had thoroughly hunted the Chequamegon Forest both in and out of season, taking trophy deer with no regard to what he considered to be the DNR's bullshit laws.
In Hank's opinion, the man he was chasing couldn't have picked a surer way to die than to go mano y mano with Hank Campbell in the woods. Worse still, he couldn't have picked a nastier section of the forest in which to try to escape.
This area was known as the Flambeau bluff because the Flambeau River supposedly originated here.
Because of the high bluff and dense forest there was really only one way to run. It was a narrow gulch that provided easy traversing and was a great place to look for deer who ambled along the path unsuspecting of the hunters lined up on one side of the trail.
Hank Campbell had hunted this area many times. And he had been successful on most of those outings.
His primitive mind told him that the killer, in a blind run, would naturally follow the path through the woods and eventually spill out on the only road bisecting the giant plot of state forest.
Millet Road was a long, winding dirt road full of rocks and washboard gravel. Mostly used by the DNR, some hunters and trout fishermen had gotten to know the road on forays for game.
Hank knew it well.
He steered the Bronco around the car with the bloody girl next to it and raced down Highway 2. In less than ten minutes he saw the turn off for Millet Road, and took it.
Hank wiped the sweat from his brow. His breathing had returned to normal but he could feel the metallic taste in his mouth from the exertion of running in the woods. His clothes were sopping wet with sweat. He really wanted a beer.
All Hank had to do was scout out where the gulch met the road, set up the gun, and his big-city, crazy-ass serial killer would deliver himself to Hank like a salmon to a grizzly bear.
The Bronco barreled down the dirt road. Hank turned the lights off and cruised more slowly. After several minutes a small gap in the forest caught his eye and he knew he was there.
He parked the Bronco and got his rifle ready.
Now it was only a matter of waiting.
And then taking his shot.
He would aim to make it a clean, final kill.
A head shot.
Chapter 56
Mike crouched next to a tree just off the trail he'd discovered and listened for the sounds of his pursuer. He wondered what to do next.
This was totally unreal. Mike's mind shifted from total fear and panic to blind fury every few seconds.
Now he was beginning to wonder if he'd made the right decision. Maybe the guy was on his way back to the car right now to kill Laurie.
Something else occurred to him.
Mike remembered his gym teacher in high school who’d been an offensive lineman in the NFL for a few years before his knee blew out. But the thing Mike remembered about him was that for a big man he moved with an incredibly deceptive grace.
What if the man following him was the same way? These guys that lived up here all hunted and could move through the woods silently. Maybe he was a hundred yards away and Mike just couldn't hear him.
Mike thought he could run back the way he'd just come and scope out the car. Or stay put, hide out, and hope that the cops would be on the scene soon. Or he could keep moving away from his hunter, and hope the cops would arrive.
In the end, he decided to keep moving and pray for a cell signal.
He stood and jogged through the darkness of the forest, following a narrow gulch.
He could keep up this pace for a good while. His breathing had settled down.
Mike knew that if he was in bad shape he'd be feeling dizzy and would faint if he lost too much blood.
If he ended up on television again he didn't want it to be a report on an actor being hunted down and killed in the woods. A case of mistaken identity.
As he raced down a small embankment he had to circle a small stand of trees before he found the path again. He had stepped up the pace and the pain in his shoulder was lessening the harder he ran.
He thought back to that day in Beta's office when he chose to go after the Nation’s Most Wanted role.
It might turn out to be the last role he ever played.
Chapter 57
Chief Lenzen plunked into the driver's seat of his squad car, his Afro pressed against the car's ceiling, and slammed the car into gear. The rear tires smoked blue as he tore out of the police department's parking lot.
With his lights and sirens on full blast he roared down the main street of Rodgers Bay.
>
Lenzen reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the card Ray Mitchell had given him. He struggled to read the phone number scrawled on the back.
He punched the numbers into his cell phone.
Ray answered on the first ring.
"Mitchell? This is Chief Lenzen. I got a call from a guy I know who said he's chasing your killer."
Lenzen listened briefly.
"On Highway 2, west of town. Look for my cruiser."
He raced past the stores and businesses downtown and the few cars on the road pulled over immediately to let the chief by.
Lenzen had been the arresting officer on one of Hank Campbell's drunk driving charges so he knew what Hank's Bronco looked like. Because he was keeping his eyes peeled specifically for Campbell's vehicle, he almost drove right past the Taurus at the side of the road. But when he saw the woman sitting on the gravel of the shoulder she lifted her hand half-heartedly to wave him down. He laid a thirty-yard patch of rubber as he brought the cruiser to a skidding stop.
He told dispatch his location.
Lenzen trotted over to the woman, his hand on his gun.
As he approached, he could see that she was dazed with dried blood smeared on her face and she was crying. Her hair fell in disheveled ribbons across her forehead.
"Thank God you're here, Officer," she said, struggling to get to her feet. She reached out for Lenzen's arm and he supported her as she stood, swaying slightly.
The chief looked closely at her cut, and her swollen lips, the laceration on the forehead. He shined the flashlight on her shoulder, casting enough light on her face for him to get a look at her eyes. The pupils were clearly dilated and he figured she had a concussion.
Using the radio attached to his shoulder, he asked the dispatcher to send an ambulance.
"Why don't you tell me what happened, ma'am?" he asked, forcing himself to be patient.
Laurie looked around as if she was seeing her surroundings for the first time.
"I don't know. I was asleep and I heard a crash, then I woke up, and then I remember seeing this huge guy standing over me, and then he was gone."
Lenzen realized his worst case scenario looked like it was coming true.
"Who was driving the car, ma'am?"
"Mike Sharpe, my boyfriend."
He could hear sirens coming down the road.
Where the hell was Hank?
"Can you describe what your boyfriend looks like?"
Laurie started to describe Mike, then paused. Realization flooded her face, and she crumpled. Lenzen barely caught her in time and prevented her from crashing to the ground.
"Oh my God, nooooooo!" she screamed.
Chapter 58
Ray Mitchell fishtailed onto Highway 2 and saw flashing lights and heard the sirens ahead. He raced forward and discovered that he was behind an ambulance and several other cop cars.
The phone call from Lenzen had caught him off guard. He was hoping for leads from the show to come in but he had not been expecting this to happen so fast.
The questions raced through his mind.
Was it Ferkovich? Had one of the locals really spotted him and managed to engage him in a pursuit?
Ray considered the prospects of a civilian finding Ferkovich and wasn't sure whether to jump for joy or pray to God it was the wrong guy.
Mitchell knew that Nation’s Most Wanted had racked up some impressive figures in mobilizing the public to guide law enforcement officials to the location of suspects. But he didn't know of any cases where civilians actually apprehended the perps.
Ferkovich was dangerous and Ray didn't want any more innocent blood to be spilled by the psychopath.
Ray pulled the car in behind the mass of lights and quickly tracked down Lenzen in the crowd. The chief was surrounded by deputies and was walking next to the paramedics who were carrying a stretcher to the ambulance.
On the stretcher, Ray saw a woman who looked like she'd gone a few rounds with someone's fists.
Lenzen spotted Ray.
"This is incredible, Detective,” the Police Chief said. “According to that woman," he said, gesturing toward the ambulance that was now pulling a U-turn on the highway and heading for the hospital, "the driver of this vehicle was Mike Sharpe, the actor who portrayed Ferkovich on tonight's episode of Nation’s Most Wanted."
Lenzen almost looked sheepish.
"You don't mean..." Ray started to say.
The chief nodded his head.
"I'm afraid our boy Hank Campbell confused the actor with the real McCoy."
"Jesus Christ."
Lenzen caught Ray's eye.
"Couple more things. There's blood on the driver's side door, the driver's seat, and the front passenger seat."
"The woman's?" Ray asked.
"Nope. She said she never left the back seat."
"Oh, Christ."
"Hank's a hunter and he probably had a gun in his truck. So he must have shot the actor. But it looks like the guy got out of the car and made it into the woods."
"So where's this Campbell?"
"Well, according to one of my deputies there's a dirt road up ahead. Millet Road. Apparently, it circles around this section of the forest. He thinks that if the actor ran into the woods, Hank may have driven up ahead to cut him off."
"If he's a hunter, why wouldn't he have followed him into the woods?"
Lenzen again looked sheepish.
"Hank's a big guy. 6'6", three hundred and fifty pounds. There's no way he could win a footrace through these woods."
Ray caught something in the chief's tone but bit his tongue. Lenzen continued.
"I'm going to send in two deputies to track the actor from behind. If he's lost much blood, he may not make it all the way out to Millet Road. If that's the case I don't want him bleeding to death out here."
He gave the signal to the waiting deputies who retrieved shotguns from the squad cars and disappeared into the woods.
Chapter 59
Joel Crumbaker, the Channel 6 cameraman, weaved his way unsteadily but consistently in the general direction of the news van. He was more than a little drunk. The only reason he had stopped drinking was that the hotel bartender had cut him off.
There was a half-pint of bourbon he kept for emergency purposes in the van and he went there, deluding himself into thinking that he should do a once-over on the equipment just in case anything broke from the Nation’s Most Wanted.
He clambered into the van through the rear door and did a half-assed attempt at arranging the cameras the way he normally did. He then scrunched through the front bucket seats and plopped into the passenger seat. Crumbaker dug the pint bottle of Wild Turkey out of the glove compartment, buried beneath a pile of gas station receipts he'd never bothered to submit for an expense report.
Boy, this was the pits, he thought to himself.
He cracked the seal on the whiskey and took a stiff drink. It burned his throat and he wished he had a chaser.
Out of boredom he flicked on the police scanner and the van's cab was suddenly full of sound.
The dispatcher was sending cars to Highway 2. Crumbaker heard a code number and tried unsuccessfully to find the small handbook of police codes. Then one of the responding officers made it easy and said something about pursuit of a fugitive.
That was all Joel Crumbaker needed to hear.
He took one last swig of whiskey, capped it and jammed it into the glove compartment, threw the door open and ran unsteadily back into the hotel. He raced through the lobby, up the stairs, and then pounded on Nancy Bishop's door.
She opened it a crack.
"What do you wa-"
"Hurry up, they're chasing him! Meet me at the van!" he half-screamed, half-slurred.
He thought he heard a man's voice through the door as he turned to race down the hallway.
Crumbaker ran unsteadily back to the van. As he slid into the driver's seat the passenger door opened and a slightly disheveled, frumpy-looking Nancy Bish
op jumped in and slammed the door.
"Let's go!" she said.
Crumbaker pounded the gear shift into drive and the big van lurched out of the parking lot.
"What did you hear?" she said and turned up the scanner.
"Sounds like half the cops in the state are in a pursuit west of town," he said.
They roared down a side street then quickly found their way to Highway 2.
"Gee, I hope we'll be able to find it," Nancy said, already seeing the distant glow of cop lights on the horizon.
They arrived on the scene several minutes later and Nancy dove in using a deadly combination of sweet smiles with bulldozing questions. She rapidly learned that a man being pursued fit the description of suspected serial killer Joe Ferkovich.
But she also overheard one cop tell another something about "mistaken identity" so Nancy had her doubt that this was the real thing. The other thing that struck her odd was that neither the chief nor Ray Mitchell were on the scene.
How could that be?
If all these cops were here then surely the chief and Mitchell had been alerted.
She walked to the far end of the section where the cop cars were parked and found one that had a window open.
She listened intently. Sure enough, Chief Lenzen's voice came across loud and clear.
"We are now on Millet Road, due to arrive at the trail's intersection in a minute or two. All units stand by."
Shit.
Nancy Bishop thought fast. Every journalistic instinct told her that the real story was going to unfold wherever this Millet Road was.
She made a snap decision and had Crumbaker set up on the scene before them.
With thirty seconds of scratching on a notebook she had her story ready to go and they shot a segment on-the-spot that was broadcast to all the network affiliate stations, as well as Channel 6 back in Milwaukee where it was the lead story on the ten o'clock news. Special programming in the Rodgers Bay area was interrupted with the late-breaking news story.
