Night Flight

by Donna Ball

  The second key fit the ignition and she turned it violently. The starter screamed in protest and she slammed the gearshift into drive. As she turned the wheel hard to the right, her front tires bounced off the curb, and there, for a moment, she had a glimpse of two bodies on the pavement. Bodies. Dead men. Someone had a gun and two people were dead. Dead . . .

  She pressed down on the accelerator and the car swung around wildly, almost out of control, slamming up and over the apron that circled the mini- mart. The man in the red cap was running toward her, his face grim, with a gun steadied in both hands and leveled straight at her. She pushed the accelerator to the floor and the tires screamed, the passenger door scraped against the side of the building with a whine of metal on brick, and the car shot out into the street.

  She did not notice another car slide out of the shadows on the opposite side of the street, headlights off, and begin to follow her.

  ************

  Chapter Three

  The town of Portersville, California was like dozens of others along the interstate—not too big, not too prosperous, built around retirement villages and the occasional tourist who was lured off the interstate by signs promising fresh produce, gas, and souvenirs. There were better motels up the road, and better restaurants, and more interesting scenery. No one stopped for long in Portersville, and it was basically a quiet town.

  The average wage was $12.75 an hour. The biggest law-enforcement problem, in terms of frequency, was burglary. Portersville had its share of drug traffic, but no more than any other town its size, and the police department was satisfied that the problem was kept pretty much under control. When there was a murder in Portersville it made the headlines for weeks. No one was prepared for random slaughter, and no officer had been killed in the line of duty for over five years.

  Three minutes after Dave had clutched the radio microphone in his hands and shouted, "Officer down! Officer down!" two cruisers swung into the parking lot with sirens blaring and dome lights swinging wild blue circles through the night. Thirty seconds after that, three more units pulled up, and in the distance Dave could hear the baleful in-and- out wail of an ambulance. He was holding Toby's head on his knees and he knew the ambulance would arrive too late.

  The bullet's entry had shattered Toby's spine, which was a mercy. The exit wound was a baseball- sized hole that pumped blood in rhythmic fountains through the ragged edges of Toby's shirt, just above his belt. No amount of pressure would stop the bleeding. The pavement was slick with it.

  Toby's breathing was irregular and wet with blood bubbles. Dave wondered how he could have stayed alive this long, with blood gushing out of his stomach by the pint and bits of charred flesh splattered all over his clothing. He was glad Toby couldn't feel the pain. He wanted to say something, something encouraging, something meaningful, something a man could say to somebody who'd been his partner and his best friend for three years and taken his ribbing and overlooked his foul moods and always been ready to go through the door first. Dave was thinking a lot of things: how he'd never told Toby it was good to have him around, or that he was a fine cop; how it should have been Toby who stayed behind with the radio instead of Dave; how he should have seen it coming, acted quicker; how he was going to miss Toby's intellectual bullshit and dry wit . . . But somehow those thoughts never made it into words, and he couldn't have said them anyway.

  There was a knot in his throat that burned and stabbed, and he wasn't sure whether it was from rage or pain. But he could hardly get a breath around it, much less words, so he just held Toby's head and watched him bleed and willed him to hold on a few minutes longer, though he knew it would do no good.

  The ambulance swung into the parking lot. The noise was deafening. Cops were everywhere, but Dave didn't hear them, barely saw them. Toby was looking at him, his eyes unfocused and fogged over and not like Toby at all. He whispered, "It was an x." And he died.

  Dave stood up slowly. The knees of his pants were soggy with blood that had pooled on the pavement. Two paramedics bent over Toby. A gurney rattled over the asphalt. Dave turned away.

  Police Chief Sam Hayforth stood in front of him, his head down, his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his J C Penney slacks. He demanded quietly, "What happened?"

  The knot in Dave's throat dissolved into bile and seemed to release a dam of rage and impotence inside him. He looked at the other man, with his balding head and his lightweight cotton jacket, and he wanted to spit. He wanted to hit something.

  "You tell me," he answered quietly, with deliberate control. He was shaking inside. "You sent us out here to pick up an informant. One-thirty, you said. She's ready to cooperate. Wait for the phone call. Be careful, she might spook. We were here. We waited. We were careful. Now you tell me. What the fuck went wrong?"

  Hayforth raised his eyes to Dave's and held his gaze, calm and steady. The intent was not to shame Dave, nor to intimidate him, but simply to remind him of who and where he was. After a long time, it worked.

  Dave felt the wild animal inside him recede and settle into the shadows, controlled if not subdued. The flaring rage was replaced by a thick ache in his throat that spread all the way down to his chest. He glanced briefly toward Toby, who was being lifted onto the gurney. He looked away before the sheet was drawn up to cover his face.

  He said stiffly, "By one-thirty, we thought she wasn't going to show. There was the usual amount of traffic in and out of here. It was hard to spot anything suspicious. She pulled in about twenty 'til two. Went straight to the phone. That guy over there ..." he nodded toward the black man sprawled on the pavement, "went up to her, might've said something. We didn't interfere. Maybe he warned her, I don't know. She got the phone call. Toby went to take her in. She looked like she'd changed her mind. Scared. She tried to get away. Before I knew what was happening . . He swallowed hard. "The black dude opened fire. Maybe he was aiming for her, maybe it was Toby. I nailed him, but by that time she was in her car, burning rubber."

  Hayforth said, "It wasn't your fault."

  Maybe that was true, but it didn't make Dave feel any better.

  Dave said softly, "I want that woman. My partner's dead and she's the reason why."

  The chief nodded. "We'll put an APB on the car. The security camera got the license. She won't get far."

  Hayforth walked over to the body of the black man. Dave followed him. A second ambulance had arrived but the paramedics were standing by uselessly, waiting for the forensics team that was being called in from the next town. On the concrete apron of the building, a uniformed officer was interviewing the teenage clerk, whose acne-scarred face gleamed white and terrified in the wash of the store lights.

  Dave stared down at the body. He said flatly, not really expecting an answer, "Who was he?"

  "His name was Deke Clemmons." From nowhere, a man in a windbreaker and khaki pants stood at their sides. "He worked for a man called Delcastle."

  He pulled out an ID folder and passed it to Hayforth. "Scott Kreiger," he said, "DEA. You can cancel that all-points. I'm taking over here."

  ********************

  Cathy had driven perhaps three miles before she realized her headlights were off. Street signs, driveways, and billboards flashed by in a blur of gray and white; the asphalt whined beneath her wheels, her breath made ragged hissing sounds on its way out of her throat. The road curved sharply and a utility pole suddenly sprang in front of her. She cut the wheel to the left and the back tires skidded on the opposite shoulder before the car straightened out again. She reached forward and turned the headlights switch with shaking fingers.

  She didn't know where she was going. She didn't know where she was. She couldn't think back; she couldn't bring up a picture of two men sprawled on the pavement and the sound of gunfire ringing in her ears, or she'd start screaming. She had to drive, just drive, she had to get away . . .

  The world was filled with muggers, rapists, psychotic killers, and child abusers. Cathy saw them every night on the n
ews: elderly people savagely beaten to death by teenagers who were just out for fun, men who settled imaginary injustices by walking into a mall and firing an assault rifle into the crowd, drug kingpins who waged virtual war on small towns. She saw these things, recoiled from them in mild repulsion, and closed her curtains and went on about her business, because horrors like that had nothing to do with her life.

  Bad things didn't happen to Cathy Hamilton. She knew small troubles and minor challenges and the everyday victories that went along with them. The car that wouldn't start, the credit card payment that got lost in the mail, the TV picture tube that went out three days after the warranty expired. Her world was uncomplicated and predictable, and she kept it that way almost by force of will; she simply could not tolerate any deviation from the norm. People did not call in the middle of the night to say that her brother had been in an accident. People didn't threaten her with guns or try to force her into strange cars or send her fleeing for her life down a strange highway in the middle of nowhere.

  But the man in the red hat had pointed a gun at her. He had wanted to kill her. Two men were dead. She'd seen it with her own eyes. She hadn't wanted to, she hadn't meant to, but it had happened . . .

  Oh Jack, oh God, don't let this be happening . . .

  Her cheeks were wet with tears, and her whole body was shaking so badly it was hard to keep the car under control. She glanced at the speedometer and saw she was doing over sixty on the narrow, unfamiliar road. She eased off the accelerator, but not much. Pushing her hand over her face, she tried to clear her eyes, and managed an almost steady breath. She glanced at the passing landscape and all of it looked the same. She had missed the expressway. She didn't know where she was. She couldn't think, she didn't know what to do . . .

  Jack would have known what to do. He was always ready to cope, never out of his depth. He was connected to reality in a way she was not nor ever would be; he had always kept her feet on the ground. He was the part of her that was rational and organized, the voice of reason when things started to fly apart; he always knew what to do.

  Stop. He would have said. Calm down. Take a deep breath. Think.

  She tried to draw in a breath. It got choked in her throat. She tried again.

  Her brother was lying in a hospital hundreds of miles away, his children were depending on her, and all she wanted to do was get to them. They were all the family she had left and they needed her, they were all that mattered. If she tried hard enough she could pretend she had never stopped at that mini- mart and everything that had come afterwards had never happened. She could keep driving, and she wouldn't have to deal with this.

  But she had to deal with it. Someone had tried to kidnap her. Another man had tried to shoot her. Now two people were dead and she didn't know why. She had to call the police. Jack would have insisted that she call the police. It was the only sane thing to do.

  Don’t forget your phone…

  She pounded her fist on the steering wheel once in frustration, because that was safer than giving way to the sobs. Damn it, her phone. How long had she taken it for granted, how many times had she forgotten to charge it, left it on her nightstand, let it go dead in the bottom of her purse? She drove ten minutes back and forth to school, what did she need a cell phone for? She felt oh so superior to those reckless drivers she saw chatting on the phone in their cars, and oh so sorry for those people who were so insecure or lonely that they had to talk on the phone in the grocery store because they couldn’t stand the thought of being disconnect from the outside world, even for a moment . But she was better than that. She knew how to keep technology in its place. She carried the cell phone for emergencies, that was all. And even then, only when Jack reminded her.

  This was an emergency. And Jack had not been there to remind her.

  The interior of the car was lit abruptly by a brilliant light. The suddenness of it made her gasp and shield her eyes, momentarily disoriented. She looked in the rearview mirror and the glare of headlights, directly behind her and too close for safety, stabbed at her eyes. The car had come from nowhere and was now riding her bumper, lights on high beam.

  She glanced at the speedometer. Fifty miles an hour. The car remained just inches off her bumper, and the bright lights made her eyes ache. She didn't need this now. God, she couldn't deal with this . . .

  She lifted her foot off the accelerator, slowing so that the car could pass. The speedometer dropped to forty-five, forty. The light that flooded her car didn't diminish. She tapped the brakes. The car behind her slowed accordingly but didn't leave her bumper. Her heart tightened in her throat.

  Her first instinct was to pull over, stop, and let him go around. She might even try to flag him down and ask for help. And she could almost hear Jack's voice saying, Don't be a fool. After what happened, out here in the middle of nowhere. . . Cathy, think, for God's sake.

  Cautiously, she pressed down on the accelerator. The car behind her kept pace. "Oh, God," she whispered.

  He wasn't following her. She was sure of that. Just a late night traveler in a hurry, maybe drunk — maybe he'd spotted a lone woman on the road and thought he'd have a little fun. In a minute he'd go around. He had to go around, because Cathy couldn't take this now, she couldn't allow herself to believe that anything else bad could happen. The nightmare had to end.

  The road on which she was traveling was a two- lane state highway, flanked on either side by shallow ditches that occasionally gave way to gently sloping embankments. It was flat and mostly straight, and there was nothing —not a house, not a billboard, not a traffic sign — on either side as far as she could see. Patches of brush and scrub grass flashed by, surreally illuminated by the headlights of the car behind her. Her heart was pounding against the wall of her chest. Her hands were sweaty on the steering wheel. What was that maniac trying to do? Why didn't he go around?

  The sound of a horn blared in her ears. Startled, she lost acceleration. The horn went on and on, one long, loud demanding blast, and suddenly it changed direction. The headlights flashed away from her mirror. He was coming around.

  She caught a glimpse of the car: long and neutral- colored, light- or mid-green, with a single male driver. He pulled in front of her and speeded up, taillights swaying crazily.

  The breath of relief that left Cathy's lungs made her chest ache. A gush of perspiration soaked her armpits, and she felt dizzy. But before her hands could even relax on the steering wheel there was a squeal of brakes and a flash of lights, and the car in front of her suddenly pulled across the road, blocking both lanes, and stopped.

  He was less than fifty yards in front of her, and those fifty yards spun out beneath the wheels of Cathy's car in slow motion. A series of details, detached flashes of truth, seconds counting down to certain death. He wanted her to stop. He was trying to force her off the road. She couldn't stop. There was no time. She was going to crash into that car and they both would die. Shock and confusion had caused her foot to stab the accelerator instead of the brake pedal, and the speedometer quivered at sixty and there was no time to pull back, she couldn't react fast enough. Wind and road noise hummed at her window. Ribbons of asphalt shoulder flashed by on either side and the hood of the gray car rushed closer, its headlights washing over a thick embankment of wild shrubs, its taillights glowing off a heavy utility pole. Trapped. She was trapped.

  She could see the driver's profile, momentarily caught in the beam of her lights. He was calm, unconcerned, waiting. She couldn't stop. The gray fender loomed in front of her. She cut the wheel and braced for impact.

  Cathy screamed as the Honda plowed into the embankment. Branches crashed against the windshield and the car tilted to the right, throwing her sideways in her seat and almost wrenching the steering wheel from her hand. She fought for control as the tires whined for traction and bounced off dirt and gravel and suddenly, unexpectedly, leapt off the embankment and seized the road again.

  Cathy's shoulders sagged and she sobbed dryly. But she did no
t slow down. And she did not look back.

  *******************

  Three miles later there was a warning sign, announcing an upcoming traffic light. Some part of her mind registered it, some part of her mind was still able to think, but the thoughts seemed detached from her, without emotion or reaction or even much significance. The light was red, and Cathy did not even slow down. She remembered a crime show Jack and she had watched once. "A fleeing suspect always takes the first right turn," he had observed. "It's instinct. That's how the cops always find them." Cathy swung the car wildly to the left. The back tires screamed and the front tires bounced off the opposite curb, but she barely noticed. The car straightened out again.

  Vaguely she registered the signs of civilization as they spun by her window: a bank, a church, a deserted McDonald's. Street lights. Safety. She began to slow down. Then she could hear the sound of her own breathing, wet and ragged and punctuated with hiccoughing sobs, echoing above the hum of the engine.

  On the left was a shopping center with a Kroger, a Hallmark store, a small drugstore. Across the street was a low brick elementary school. She swung sharply into the Kroger parking lot. There was a telephone booth in front of the supermarket.

  She stopped the car and spent a moment with her arms crossed over the steering wheel and her head resting against them, shaking uncontrollably. Over, she kept trying to tell herself. It's over.

  But it wasn't over. The taste of what had happened back there on the highway would stay with her the rest of her life.

  She straightened up; fumbling for change from the dashboard. Coins scattered on the floor. She bent to retrieve them but they slipped through her shaky, sweaty fingers. Wait. 911 calls were free. Weren’t they? She managed to scoop up some coins anyway and stuff them into her pocket.