Scott Free

by John Gilstrap

  Scott hadn’t been noticing the band much, but when they stopped playing abruptly in the middle of yet another march, the silence startled him. He looked that way in time to see the conductor raise his baton. Two seconds later, two dozen loudspeakers throughout the square announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.”

  On cue, the band played ruffles and flourishes, followed immediately by the familiar strains of “Hail to the Chief.” As the music played, Scott watched, oddly mesmerized, as the president and first lady entered from the right and wandered across the stage, huge smiles on their faces as they waved to the packed square. Other familiar faces trailed them, though Scott couldn’t quite place where he’d seen them. One might well have been a senator, he thought, and the others, by process of elimination, must have been the mayor of Eagle Feather and the governor of Utah.

  The president stopped short of the podium, and stood at the edge of the stage until the music stopped, at which point the crowd erupted in cheers and enthusiastic applause that was nonetheless muted by gloved hands. About five steps behind and to the president’s right, Scott recognized the face of Agent Sanders. At the far edge of stage left, barely visible to the crowd, he could see Chief Whitestone standing in an uncomfortable posture that told Scott he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

  “The crowd, Scott,” James whispered.

  It took more concentration than he would have thought, trying to recognize one face. At least from up here, he could see the proverbial forest and not just the trees. And what a huge forest of humanity it was, splashes of brilliant colors against a sparkling white backdrop. Above the crowd hung a misty cloud of condensed breath, and somehow, through all of that, Scott was supposed to find one—

  Something on the near side caught his eye and his back stiffened.

  “See something?” James asked, alerted by the body language.

  Below and in front, Brandon came to full alert. “What is it, Scott?”

  He didn’t answer because he didn’t really know. It was a flash of something familiar in the midst of so much that was strange, over there just this side of the bandstand. “There!” he said, pointing. “That hat. The fur hat.”

  “Where? I don’t see it.”

  Scott didn’t either, anymore. But it had been there. The plush fur hat that looked like something out of a Russian movie. Following one person in this crowd was like trying to follow one drop of water in a rushing stream. Then, he saw it again. “There! See it? The big fur hat.”

  James craned his neck, but still saw nothing.

  “Does he have something?” Whitestone’s voice asked over the radio.

  From all the way at the back of the stage, he’d read their movements for what they were. James brought his portable radio to his lips and keyed the mike. “Stand by, Chief. I don’t know yet.” Then, to Scott: “Say something, son.”

  “Give me a second,” Scott snapped. How could he be sure? A hat was a hat, after all. How could he tell one from the other? Then he saw a flash of green, and he remembered Isaac’s coat. Navy blue ski jacket with green shoulders. “Holy, shit! That’s him! That’s Isaac!”

  “Where?” James insisted.

  “There! Right there!” How could he make it any plainer? “The fur hat. Blue and green jacket.”

  James said into his radio, “The boy sees him, Chief. Fur hat, blue and green coat.” With those words, he’d just described no fewer than three dozen people in the crowd. “I still don’t see him, Scott.”

  Aw, screw it. “Follow me,” Scott said, and before anyone could stop him, he’d jumped off the wall and was running into the crowd.

  “Move in!” James shouted into his radio. “Follow the boy and move in.”

  Scott didn’t care about excuse me’s anymore. He plowed head-long into the crowd, doing his best to avoid people, but pushing anyone who got in his way. Problem was, through the sea of bodies and heads he couldn’t see a damned thing. All the more reason to move quickly. Get to the spot where he’d seen DeHaven before the killer had a chance to move on.

  Everywhere, throughout the square, dozens of police officers and Secret Service agents moved in for the capture, and within seconds, the assembled crowd knew that something was terribly wrong. The concerned murmur turned to pandemonium as officers converged on a spot none of them had seen.

  Up on the stage, Sanders spoke two words into his wrist mike, and seconds later, Secret Service agents swarmed onto the stage from all directions, first surrounding the president, and then whisking him to safety in the wings. One agent, in an image that would make the front page of virtually every newspaper in the Western world, ostentatiously brandished a submachine gun, and then the panic was complete.

  “Scott! Wait!” Brandon shouted over the noise. “Wait for the others!”

  But Scott couldn’t stop. He was the only one who knew what he was looking for: the hat and the jacket. And now, he was trying to find them in the midst of panic. Where did he go? Where the hell did he go?

  Oh, shit! There! The killer was running. Isaac knew he’d screwed up, and now he was getting the hell out. “Isaac!” Scott shouted. “Stop!”

  But the other man had no intention of stopping. He joined the surge of running spectators, trying his best to blend in with the others.

  Then he disappeared entirely. Poof, just like that, he was gone. Scott slowed to a jog, then stopped altogether, his arms outstretched, baffled.

  “Where?” James said when he caught up, his weapon drawn. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know!” Scott said. “He was right here.” He emphasized the words with a chopping motion of his hand. “Right. Here.”

  “Well, where is he now?”

  Scott heard the frustration in Alexander’s voice, and as law enforcement officials converged from all over the universe, he felt a sense of desperation himself.

  “Where!” James shouted.

  “I don’t know, okay?” Scott shouted back. “I don’t fucking know!”

  He felt a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Scott…,” Brandon said, his voice soothing.

  Scott shook himself free from his grasp. Suddenly, he was the center of a large crowd. There was enough firepower to start the Battle of Utah. “I saw him!” Scott insisted. “He was right here, and then he slipped into the crowd and he was gone!”

  “I believe you, son,” Brandon said.

  “They don’t!” Scott said, making a sweeping motion at the winded, twitchy cops. “It was Isaac DeHaven. He was wearing a fur cap and a blue-and-green ski jacket, okay? When everybody panicked and started to run, I guess he saw it and he took off. Then he disappeared.” As he scanned the crowd, he saw a lot of skepticism. “I am not making this up!”

  “Hey!” someone yelled from off to Scott’s right. Everyone turned to see a cop holding a blue-and-green ski jacket in one hand, a fur cap in the other.

  35

  BACK AT THE POLICE STATION, Barry Whitestone tried to help Scott remove his Kevlar vest, but the boy yanked himself away. “I can do it myself,” he snapped.

  “Nobody’s blaming you,” Whitestone said.

  “The hell you’re not. You think I ran him off.”

  Brandon put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Take it easy, Scott.”

  “Officer Alexander thinks I made the whole thing up.”

  Whitestone scoffed, “He thinks no such thing.”

  Scott deepened his voice and mocked, “Maybe you were mistaken.” He pulled the vest over his head and slammed it onto the table nearest him. In his own voice, he said, “I’m not the one who set off the panic, you know. I’m not the one who pulled out all the artillery and started shouting.”

  “You were supposed to stay put and let us do the chasing,” Whitestone said gently.

  “I tried! I kept pointing, but Officer Alexander just kept saying, ‘Where? Where?’ If I hadn’t chased, him, he’d have gotten away.”

  An eavesdropping cop Scott didn’t recognize said,
“And the difference is…?”

  “Screw you!”

  Brandon stepped in and slipped his arm around the boy. “Okay, Scott, that’s enough. You’ve got nothing to apologize for. Without you, they wouldn’t have anything. They wouldn’t know what the guy looks like, they wouldn’t have DNA samples of his hair, and the president of the United States would likely be dead. No matter what else happened, you accomplished that much.”

  Scott didn’t want to talk about it anymore. The words of Agent Sanders, the dickhead from the Secret Service, still echoed in his head: if there’d been a real threat to the president, he would have heard it in his security briefing. As if the Secret Service automatically knows everything. Seemed to Scott that it was the ones they didn’t know about that always bit them in the ass. Sorta by definition.

  God, it was so easy for these jerks. While they were all pissed off about their alleged assassin, Scott was the only one who had to worry about the real one tracking him down for the rest of his life.

  “I wouldn’t worry about the guy,” Whitestone said, somehow reading his mind. “If he’s out there, we’ll get him. Bacteria couldn’t squeeze through the blocks we’ve set up.”

  Yeah, right. Don’t worry. This from the man who woke Scott up just this morning by telling him to worry.

  In the background, a cell phone chirped, and as one, everyone checked their belts and pockets.

  “Hey, Dad,” Scott said. “Your coat’s ringing.” Brandon had left his coat draped over a desk chair, and sure enough, his pocket was chirping. While Brandon fished out the phone, Scott stepped away from the others, trying to be alone in the crowd. All he wanted was to go home.

  “Hey, Scott,” Brandon said, calling him back. “It’s your mom. She wants to talk to you.”

  Oh, now that was exactly what he needed—another count-your-blessings lecture. He paused for a second before launching a great sigh and taking the phone. “Hi, Mom.”

  But it was Isaac’s voice that said, “Keep a poker face, kid. It’s all that’s keeping your mama alive.”

  Scott felt the blood drain from his head. He turned away so the others couldn’t see. “What are you—”

  “Hush, Scott. Poker face, remember? Smile and say, ‘Oh, pretty good.’”

  For a second, Scott didn’t get it. Then he did. “Oh, pretty good,” he said. They were faking a conversation here.

  “Nicely done,” Isaac said with a laugh. “Almost casual. You’re a natural. Say, ‘Thank you.’”

  “Thank you.”

  “Outstanding.”

  Scott dared a glance behind him, but his dad seemed to have zoned into a conversation that Whitestone was having with the cop who’d busted his chops.

  “Take a look at your watch,” Isaac instructed. “Mine shows four twenty-three.” So did Scott’s. “Five thirty-eight is the number you need to remember. Tattoo it on your brain. That’s one hour and fifteen minutes from now. At five thirty-nine I put a bullet through your mother’s head. Laugh.”

  His mind racing, Scott did a serviceable impression of a chuckle. “Why?”

  This time it was Isaac’s turn to laugh. “It’s what I do, kid. You can save her, though. All you have to do is follow directions. You know where the Widow Maker lift is on SkyTop?”

  Scott nodded and shot another nervous look toward his dad. “Yeah.”

  “Be there by five oh-eight. That’s forty-five minutes from now. Look for your skis in the rack outside the main lodge, between the dining room and the ski school bell. Got it?”

  Across the room, Brandon finally did lock onto his son’s gaze, and he didn’t like what he saw. He started walking that way.

  “Yeah, I got it,” Scott said. Then he whispered, “Make it fast, my dad is coming.”

  “Makes it more interesting, doesn’t it? You’ve got to be quite the actor now. I have faith in you.”

  “Something wrong, Scott?” Brandon asked.

  Scott pivoted the mouthpiece away from his chin and did his best to look confused. “No, why?”

  “You look disturbed.”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  In his ear, Isaac said, “I recognize that voice.”

  Scott covered the mouthpiece with his thumb. “Can you give me a minute, Dad?” He gestured for Brandon to mind his own business.

  Brandon arched his eyebrows. “Secrets?”

  The boy answered with an impatient glare.

  Even more curious and maybe a little hurt, Brandon hesitated, then walked back toward the cluster of cops.

  “Okay, we’re alone again.”

  “And the clock is still ticking,” Isaac said. His voice was so smooth, so calculating, that Scott had to stifle a chill. “Come alone, kid. If I see you with company, I’ll kill her. In fact, I don’t even want you talking to anyone. If this phone is busy when I call, she’s dead. Tell me you love me, too.”

  This whole thing made Scott want to throw up. “I love you, too.”

  “Tick-tock.” The line went dead.

  For a moment, he just held the phone to his face, his mind suddenly and inexplicably empty. He had a thousand things to do, all at the same time, and now he couldn’t grasp a single one. Christ, forty-five minutes wasn’t enough time to get to Widow Maker—forty-two minutes now. Not nearly enough. If there was any traffic at all, he was screwed.

  SkyTop wasn’t like most ski resorts, where the lodge was at the bottom and all the slopes rose above it. At SkyTop, the lodge sat on top of the slope called Prospector, from which the entire world fell away, branching off dozens of times with chutes and trails that led to all of the other chutes and trails. At SkyTop, maps were mandatory. Cody Jamieson had told him that six or seven people got seriously lost every week. To get to the top of the Widow Maker lift, Scott would have to drive to the lodge, ski halfway down Prospector before veering off to the right and following a treacherous trail through the woods to Bald Eagle Glade, and then on down to the bottom, where he’d then catch the chair to Widow Maker.

  He’d never make it. And Isaac knew that.

  “Are you okay?” Brandon asked.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, I’m fine. I need the keys to the Jeep.”

  “What for?” Brandon could read the boy like a newspaper.

  “I just want to get my water bottle,” Scott said, surprised at how easily the lie came.

  “It’s unlocked.”

  “I locked it.”

  “When?”

  “As I got out, okay?” He heard the edge in his own voice, and he quickly tried to cover. “What is it with everybody? You think I make stuff up, too?”

  Brandon recoiled. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Can I just have the keys, please?”

  Brandon didn’t like it; Scott saw it written in his dad’s features. But he also knew that his status as a teenager bought him a little deference for emotional outbursts. Scowling, Brandon dug the keys out of his pocket and handed them over. “How about you dial it down a little?”

  Scott took the keys and tried to look repentent as he walked toward the door. God, he’d just killed a whole minute. He was reaching for the handle when Brandon called after him, “You’ve still got my phone, kiddo.”

  Scott pretended not to hear. He just stormed out of the squad room, through the airlock and out into the icy air. He wanted to run. He needed to run, but he knew that he dared not. Dad was too curious as it was.

  Don’t cross me, kid. The admonition still stirred his gut.

  The Cherokee sat where they’d left it, angled up on a snow bank that once had been a parking space. It was unlocked. As Scott climbed into the driver’s seat, cranked the ignition and slipped the transmission into reverse, he tried not to think about the riddled corpse and blood spatters that had soiled the last vehicle he’d driven. He tried not to think about any of the blood he’d seen in the last week. All the gallons of it. Instead, he thought about the impossible task that lay ahead.

  He had to hurry, but he also had to be careful. If he d
rove off the road, it was all over. He couldn’t let that happen.

  It never even occurred to him that in a little over an hour, he’d probably be dead himself.

  “THEY’VE GOT HIM!”

  The suddenness of the outburst drew all heads around to behold Mattie Simms, the dispatcher, standing in the doorway to her cubicle, the ever-present headset still dangling from her ear. “They’ve got the killer! James Alexander just called it in. He was still here in town, and James has him in custody. ETA one minute.” Mattie could not have looked happier if she’d just won the lottery.

  The room erupted in noise as over a dozen police officers surged toward the front windows to get the first glimpse of the prisoner in custody. Blissfully absent, Brandon noted, was Agent Sanders of the Secret Service, whose precious cargo was probably over Kansas by now, winging his way back to Washington on Air Force One.

  Scott had only been out of the room for five minutes, but still, Brandon wondered where he’d wandered off to. After all he’d been through, Scott would want to witness the arrest, if only to set his mind finally at ease. Brandon tried to make his way to the front of the crowd to catch a glimpse through the window, but the knot of people was too tight. In the distance, the sound of an approaching siren cut through the chatter.

  “There he is!” someone yelled, and the crowd shifted from the window to the area just inside the door.

  “All right, people, back up!” Whitestone yelled. “Make a hole.” At first, no one moved, but then the chief started moving them. Three seconds later, an aisle had opened.

  Through the weaving crop of heads, Brandon could just barely see James Alexander helping someone out of his Explorer and on up the sidewalk to the front doors, which opened for them, as if by magic. James looked deadly serious until he crossed the threshold, at which point a grin spread from ear to ear.

  Brandon smiled back at him, relieved that the ordeal was finally over. Seeing James was easy; his head towered above the crowd. It took a bit longer to see his prisoner, but at the very first glance, Brandon knew that someone had made a terrible mistake. The guy looked like he’d been snatched from a homeless shelter; not a bit like the description Scott had given. Woefully underdressed in just flannel shirtsleeves and blue jeans, he was about twenty years too old and half a liter too drunk. More than that, Brandon expected to see a certain look in the eyes of a professional killer. It’s one of those things he couldn’t describe up front, but would know when he saw it. He didn’t see it here. James’s prisoner looked scared to death.