Nathan’s Run

by John Gilstrap

  Nathan’s heart dropped when he saw the second set of headlights in his mirror. That was no child molester in the car behind him. That was a cop. As the second car approached from behind, its lights highlighted the red and blue lightbar on the roof.

  Keep cool, boy, Nathan coached himself silently. They haven’t stopped you yet. Maybe they don’t know. Maybe they’re on their way someplace else. He knew the thought was ridiculous, but his brush with suicide had shaken him into a forced optimism. As long as there was hope…

  His mind raced for a way out. As long as they were all just driving along together and he was in the front, then everything was okay. But soon they would make a move, and he wanted to be prepared. They had to catch him before they could put him back in a cage. Just be ready for anything.

  He wasn’t.

  Up ahead, the woods on either side of him started to give way to darkened homes and businesses. A yellow reflective sign warned him of an approaching intersection with a school crossing, and instructed him to slow down to twenty-five. Under the circumstances, Nathan didn’t think that would be a very good idea. His foot got heavier. Whatever they were going to do, he sensed it would happen soon.

  There it was. A roadblock. About a hundred yards ahead, a cop car was crossways in the street, its blue and red lights sweeping the buildings around it. In his rearview mirror, two more sets of lights jumped to life, and he was startled by the electronic yelp of a siren.

  “Oh, shit!” he spat, not even hearing the words as they escaped. For just the slightest instant, he took his foot off the gas, but then he realized that to keep hope alive, he had to keep moving. “Just you and me, God,” he said.

  Jamming the gas pedal to the floor, the rubber pad became just a tiny wedge between his sneaker and the thin-napped carpet.

  Steadman couldn’t believe what he was seeing. After having to hit his brakes when the kid slowed down, the distance between them grew dramatically. Over the wail of his siren, he could hear the whiny roar of the Honda’s engine as it dopplered away from him.

  “Son of a bitch is running!” he shouted into his mike.

  But there was no place to go. Watts’s cruiser had completely blocked the roadway, leaving only a foot between his back bumper and the four-inch curb. Nothing could get through that space.

  Steadman thumbed his mike again. “Christ, Sarge, he’s gonna ram you!”

  Even as he approached the cop car blocking his path, Nathan didn’t know where he was going to go, except that somehow he was going to get past it. The distance closed with frightening speed as the Honda’s speedometer passed fifty.

  More by instinct than by conscious thought, with less than a dozen yards to go before impact with the police cruiser, Nathan gallumphed the Honda over the curb, the transmission making a horrendous crashing sound as it dragged itself along the concrete. The car went airborne for just an instant, and then crashed back down onto the grass on all four wheels. He struggled to control the vehicle as it spun on the dew-soaked sod.

  He didn’t even see the shotgun before it discharged.

  “Jesus Christ!” Steadman shouted aloud as he saw Watts discharge his riot gun at point-blank range into the Honda. The muzzle flash was three feet long in the darkness. “Fucker’s dead now,” he declared, surprised by the satisfaction in his voice.

  The explosion to his left deafened Nathan instantly, though he shrieked aloud as nine thirty-two-caliber pellets mauled the rear window and post, shredded the passenger seat and headrest, and then went on to blast out the windshield, leaving him a near-opaque spiderweb of shattered glass to see through. It had to be a shotgun, he knew. The dickheads were still trying to kill him!

  He had no time to regain his bearings before he was back out on the flat street, with the roadblock getting smaller behind him. As he watched in the rearview mirror, he saw a muzzle flash like a yellow camera strobe, and just an instant later, the mirror, along with the rest of the windshield, was gone in a white puff of erupting glass. He yelled again and pressed the gas pedal even harder.

  The car did not respond.

  “Oh, God, no! Not now! Please, God, not now!” For the first time since he had seen the cars in the mirror, he was gripped with terror. The Honda was slowing! He tried to downshift, but the gears responded only with a teeth-rattling groan. The gearbox had been destroyed by the impact with the curb.

  As Nathan pleaded for help from the Almighty, the speedometer crossed twenty-five on its way down to zero.

  “FUCK!” he shouted. It was the worst word he knew.

  He jammed the brake and the Honda jolted to a stop in the middle of the road. I’ll do it on foot if I have to, he declared silently.

  But Steadman was on him before he could reach for the door handle.

  “Let me see your hands!” an adult voice shrieked from behind him. “Show me your hands or I’ll blow your fucking head offl.”

  Nathan sat still for a moment, coming to grips with the end of his journey. Somewhere in this mess there was hope, he supposed, but it was awfully well camouflaged. He slowly raised his hands into the air, surrendering not only to the police, but to his own fate.

  His ears still rang from the gunshot, but he could hear the sound of running feet as they approached from behind. Out of nowhere, a gun barrel propelled itself through what was left of his side window and bored painfully into his ear.

  “Get out of the car!” someone yelled. “Get out of the fucking car!”

  “I can’t!” Nathan protested. The gun barrel was pushing him in exactly the opposite direction, making it impossible for him to obey. “I said get the fuck out!”

  “Gun!” a second voice shouted. “There’s a gun on the seat! Watch his hands!”

  Two sets of hands descended on him, grabbing fistfuls of his T-shirt and his hair. Using these as handles, they dragged him out of the car through the shattered side window. “Ow!” Nathan yelled. “You’re hurting me! I’ll do whatever you want!” He felt the rounded shards of glass embedding themselves into the flesh of his arms and his legs and his belly.

  When he was free of the window, they slammed him to the pavement, driving the breath from his lungs, and making purple spots explode behind his eyes. They continued to shout conflicting orders to him, but he could no longer hear what they were saying. A booted foot on his jaw pressed his face into the pavement, while a knee drove deeply into the small of his back. Nathan pleaded for mercy while the police officers bent his arms back at impossible angles to handcuff him. Another inch, and he swore that his shoulder would come completely free of the socket.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are running from me, motherfucker?” one of the cops hissed in his ear, just before the bracelets went from tight to excruciating.

  “Please don’t hurt me anymore,” Nathan begged. “I promise I’ll do what you say.”

  “You already blew that chance, asshole,” the cop replied.

  Using the chain between the handcuffs as their handle, the cops lifted Nathan first to his knees, then used his throbbing shoulders to bring him to his feet. His nose was bleeding freely from both nostrils, like a steadily dripping faucet. With no hands to divert the flow, the two streams converged just below his lower lip, and then fell in heavy drops Qnto his shirt and his Reeboks.

  Nathan blinked rapidly to clear his vision, and got a good look at his captors. They looked just like every other cop in the world, clean-cut and mean as hell. A third officer approached them as Nathan was steadied on his feet against one of the cruisers. The new officer looked more than mean; he was mad and mean, and he wore a gold badge over his breast pocket, different from the silver badges of the other two. Over the other pocket, the gold cop wore a gold name tag that read WATTS.

  Watts walked up to within three feet of the boy. “You Nathan Bailey?” he asked.

  Nathan nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, drooling blood.

  Watts was older than the others, and despite a considerable paunch, looked enormously strong. His biceps st
rained his shirt sleeves, and no collar could possibly contain his neck. He had the eyes of a wolf, piercing and threatening. It was the same look Nathan had seen from Ricky Harris.

  “Is it true you killed a prison guard?” Watts asked.

  Nathan nodded again. “Yes, sir, but…”

  Before he could answer, Watts drove an unseen nightstick into the boy’s testicles. Nathan cried out in agony and collapsed like a marionette onto the street. Unable to cradle his balls, he brought his knees up protectively, and fought for breath.

  “Some judge is probably gonna let you off,” Watts said, his face forming a satisfied grin, “but I wanted you to know there’s a price for killing a cop.” Turning to his subordinates, he added, “Get this dog turd out of here.”

  Steadman gave a mock salute and yanked Nathan up by his arms, dumping him in the back seat of his cruiser like a bag of dog food.

  During the twelve-mile trip to the police station, Nathan never moved. He just lay on his side, knees up, waiting for hope to return.

  Chapter 26

  Lady Luck was a strange old broad. Pointer had planned to mingle with the cops around Jenkins Township, masquerading as a police officer from Braddock County, assigned to follow the case as it progressed in Pennsylvania. Sooner or later, he’d hear something, and he’d make his plans from there. It would have worked, too. The uniform and ID card were authentic, obtained as partial payment for a debt owed by a midlevel civilian bureaucrat attached to the Braddock County PD. Even his badge number was legit, assigned to a fictitious character named Terry Robertson, who supposedly worked out of the Bankston substation. In the unlikely event that anyone might have checked, they would have found that Terry had been temporarily attached to the Drug Enforcement Administration in Houston. The hoax would be discovered, probably during the October budget cycle, but the prank would be untraceable, and no doubt written off as a computer hacker getting his jollies.

  That was the plan, anyway. The reality proved to be much simpler. As he was checking into the Spear and Musket Motor Lodge—the only hotel in Jenkins Township with an available room that rented for an entire night—Pointer’s attention was drawn to the Special Report graphic on the desk clerk’s ten-inch TV. He wondered what could possibly be so important as to interrupt the all-night movie channel at 3:00 A. M. The enormously fat fingers of the enormously fat clerk stopped in midword as she, too, zeroed in on the report.

  The woman—her name tag read ABIGAIL—swiveled in her chair to turn up the volume on the set. Pointer suppressed a smile as he likened the clerk to a living snowman, gelatinous inner tubes stacked one on top of another.

  All traces of amusement disappeared, however, when the screen filled with Nathan Bailey’s picture, overlaid with the words, “IN CUSTODY?’ A delighted announcer reported that those residents of Pennsylvania who were still awake (both of them) could sleep peacefully for the balance of the night, comfortable in the knowledge that the nation’s most famous fugitive had been apprehended by police in Pitcairn County, New York.

  “I’ll be damned?’ Pointer said softly—to himself really, but Abigail heard him and shook her head pitifully, the skin of her second and third chins swinging in counterpoint to her head.

  “That poor little boy,” she clucked. “I think they should just leave him alone.”

  Under normal conditions, Pointer would have said nothing, but in tribute to his disguise, he offered a protest. “That poor boy killed a cop,” he said.

  Clearly, the badge and the uniform meant little to Abigail. “Only after the cop was trying to kill him. What else could he have done? I mean, look at him. That boy’s no murderer.”

  Pointer’s head had already left their little conversation. He remembered from his Rand MacNally Road Atlas that Pitcairn County was in the southernmost part of New York, well off the interstate routes that had seemed attractive to the kid the day before. If he hustled, he could be there in a couple of hours.

  Without a word, Pointer turned on his heel and left, just as Abigail was spinning the registration card around on the counter for his signature.

  “I meant no offense!” she called after him as the glass door swung shut.

  By the time they arrived at the station, the agony in Nathan’s groin had dulled to a throb, and his nose had stopped bleeding, though the coppery taste remained in his mouth. The various cuts and bruises had somehow melded together into a single body ache. The handcuffs had long since made his fingers numb.

  During the endless ride in the cruiser, Nathan eavesdropped on the radio conversations between the cops involved in his arrest and capture. The way they talked, you’d think he was Butch Cassidy. He nearly reminded his driver—a cop named Steadman—that he was only twelve, and that it had taken three of them to beat him up. He wanted to tell them how his dad had told him that bigger guys who gang up on little guys are called bullies. He wanted to say a lot of things, but decided that silence would reap greater and longer-lasting rewards.

  Steadman climbed out of the car as soon as it yanked to a stop. An instant later, Nathan felt the rush of humid night air as the back door came open, and hands were on his shirt collar and the waistband of his shorts, bringing him to his feet. The rough treatment was intentional, he knew—more lessons for killing a dickhead. They wanted him to beg some more, probably so they could think about it when they went home and jerked off. But Nathan was done begging. He was back in the system now, and silence was the only thing that really worked. Silence allowed the dickheads to think that they had won, while at the same time allowing you to preserve your self-respect.

  They could hurt him all they wanted, but he wouldn’t beg, and he wouldn’t cry. He’d fight them silently, he decided. His will against theirs. During his ride in the cruiser, stretched out on the Naugahyde seat where the odor still clung of countless drunks and real criminals, Nathan decided that he would never again suffer the humiliations he had endured the first time around. He was going to go down for murder, the worst crime there was. What difference did it make, then, if he ultimately committed the crime for which he would pay anyway? The next time somebody tried to pull down his pants or steal his stuff, there would be a fight, and the fight wouldn’t end until Nathan had won. If that meant that one of them would have to die, what difference would it make?

  With the cops and the guards, you had to put up with a certain amount of bullshit and humiliation; it was built into the process. But there was a line where the institutional bullshit stopped and cruelty began. These assholes who’d just busted him had crossed the line, but there wasn’t much he could do when his hands were tied behind him. There was dignity, even, in getting the crap beaten out of you, so long as you took it. Nathan had begged, and he hated himself for it. It was a mistake he’d never make again.

  “Come with me, tough guy,” Steadman commanded, apparently noting a change in his prisoner’s demeanor.

  Steadman had to unlock the front door to the station before they could enter. With Watts’s participation in the chase, the shift had been stripped clean of personnel, leaving no one behind to watch the store. The Pitcairn County Police Station was tiny by most standards, consisting of a lobby with a watch desk from which extended two hallways. At the end of one hallway was a small locker room for use by the officers on duty and a cafeteria/roll call room where all meetings were held. Down the other hallway were the two detention cells, which normally remained empty during the week, and were packed with drunks on the weekend. New York state troopers, who frequented the station primarily for its bathrooms and coffee, called the place Mayberry.

  The original foundation and walls of the detention cells had been erected in 1827, when the community’s concern for a prisoner’s well-being was very much less than what it was today. Window glass and wooden floors were considered outlandish luxuries, and in combination with a flushing toilet and cold-water sink, those luxuries defined the substance of the latest renovation effort to the facility, completed in 1938 as a WPA project.

&
nbsp; Unlike his original arrest, in which Nathan spent the first three hours of his incarceration handcuffed to a wooden chair as he was in-processed, Steadman led him directly to a detention cell. The hallway sloped noticeably downward, toward two heavy wooden doors. As they approached, the temperature dropped an easy fifteen degrees, and the humidity seemed to top the scale.

  “Not sure what kind of country club you’re used to, boy, but not many of our overnight guests ever want to come back,” Steadman explained with a smile. “Had a drunk in here one night who was so passed out the rats ate out his eyeballs before he had a chance to wake up.

  Nathan tried to look impassive, but something in his expression made Steadman laugh. The cop inserted an old-fashioned iron key into the keyhole, and turned the lock with a solid klunk. The three-inch-thick oak door swung open noiselessly, and Steadman stepped aside.

  The interior of the cell was three times the size of his room at the JDC, and lit only by a single light bulb dangling near the ten-foot-high ceiling. Besides the rough red sandstone walls and concrete floor, the only objects in the cell were an ancient canvas-on-wood Army cot and a kind of toilet that Nathan had never seen before. The bowl looked like all toilets, but there was a box of some sort over top of it.

  “Here’s your suite for the night, Mr. Bailey,” Steadman said with a grin.

  Nathan tried to straighten his shoulders and enter his cell with dignity, but couldn’t quite pull it off. Behind the brave mask lurked terrified eyes.

  “Lean against the wall,” Steadman ordered.

  Still without a word, Nathan complied, pressing the side of his face against the cold red bricks. Steadman kicked the boy’s feet back and to the side to form a human tripod. From there, he released Nathan’s handcuffs.