Chase: Roman

made after it with a renewed burst of speed.
        ‘No!’ Chase shouted.
        But his voice was weak, nothing more than the soft gasp of dry air escaping from a punctured paper bag, and even he outran the sound of it.
        Judge reached the car, flung the door open and piled inside behind the wheel, swinging the door shut after him in one quick, smooth move. He had either left the keys in the ignition or, possibly, had kept the motor running while he went about passing his ‘judgment,’ for now the Volkswagen pulled away from the edge of the road, screeched as its spinning tyres hit the asphalt and kicked thick smoke out from under them like clouds of white dusting powder. In this one instance, at least, Judge had prepared the way far better than any amateur might be expected to.
        Chase did not even have the opportunity to catch part of the licence number, because he was startled out of his wits by the sound of an air horn close behind him, frighteningly close behind.
        He threw himself sideways off the road, tripped as the ground dropped under him and rolled over and over on the gravel verge, hugging himself for protection against the stones, until the steep bank brought him to a sudden and somewhat painful stop.
        A touch of brakes sounded just once, like the cry of a wounded man. A large moving van - with dark letters against its orange side: U-HAUL - boomed past, moving much too fast on the steep incline of Kanackaway Ridge Road, swaying slightly back and forth as its load shifted. Chase had time to wish that it would catch up with the Volkswagen and plow right over it without slowing down. Then it was out of sight.
        

    Six
        
        There was a two-inch scratch on his forehead, just above his right eye, and a slightly smaller cut on his right cheek, both inflicted by the thorns in the bramble row, both of them already crusted with dried blood. The tips of four fingers were likewise scarred by the brambles, but they were the wounds least to be worried about; in the midst of a dozen other pains, they were unnoticeable. His ribs ached from having rolled for some distance on the gravel berm of the Kanackaway Ridge Road - though none of them seemed broken when he tested them with his hands -and his chest, back and arms were bruised where the largest stones had dug in for a prolonged moment as he passed over them. Both his knees had been skinned open and wept thin blood. He had lost his shirt, of course, when he ripped it in two as protection from the thorns, and his trousers were fit only for the trash can.
        He sat in the Mustang by the edge of the park, assessing the damage done, and he was not at all relieved, as some might well have been, that he had got away with minor abrasions when he might have lost his life. He was so angry that he wanted to strike out at something, anything, or, failing that, scream at the top of his voice. Over the course of several minutes, however, as he caught his breath and as the sharpness of his pains settled into many small, dull aches, his urge to action was tempered by his common sense. There was nothing to be gained by running off in a rabbit-quick mood of revenge. Sit still. Settle down. Think it out.
        Already a few cars had arrived at lovers’ lane, driving over the sod to the hedges, where they eagerly took advantage of the first sheets of darkness. The stars were not even out yet, nor the last traces of sunset scoured from the rim of the sky, but the lovers were game. Chase was amazed at their bravura in returning to the scene of the murder while the madman who had knifed Michael Karnes was still on the loose. He wondered if they would lock their car doors tonight.
        Since there well might be police patrols along Kanackaway yet, hoping for the killer to make a second attempt, the most suspicious thing would be a man sitting alone in his car. Chase started the motor, raced the engine once or twice, then turned around and started back into the city.
        As he drove, he tried to recall everything he had seen so that no clue as to Judge's real identity might slip by. Judge owned a silenced pistol and a red Volkswagen. He was a bad shot, but judging from the way he had taken off, a fairly good driver. Judge got nervous easily, as his blind firing had proved. And that was about the sum of it.
        What next? The police?
        But when he remembered Wallace and his patronizing tone, he rejected that