Dark of the Moon

“I’m going down the tracks, I’m going down the tracks…”
    Big Curley: “I’m behind Marvin’s, heading toward the elevator.”
    A few seconds later, the tornado siren went off. The dispatcher called: “I’m waking up everybody in town. I’ve got the weather-tree going—in five minutes, everybody in town will know that it’s Williamson and they’ll all be looking out the windows.”
    Margo Carr: “Do you think he cut back across Poplar? If he’s headed down to the river, he’ll be hard to spot.”
    Jensen: “Tommy, get back to the weather-tree, tell people to lock their doors and call if somebody tries to get at a car.”
    Dispatcher: “Louie Barth says somebody ran down the alley just a minute ago, behind his house…”
    Carr: “I’m right there, I’m taking the alley…”
    Virgil had brushed the glass off the seat of his truck, threw the decapitated dummy in the back, and took off, calling, “Careful, careful, Margo, don’t let him ambush you. Where am I going, where am I going…?”
    Saw flashers, north, turned that way, more flashers coming up behind. Dispatcher called, “I’ve got everybody coming in, we’re coming right in on top of you, Margo…”
     
    V IRGIL HEARD the boom of a shotgun, close, no more than a couple of blocks, called, “Got gunfire, got gunfire…” saw the lights ahead, cut left, closed, cut left, found a squad car across a street, a body on the ground, Stryker standing, then on the radio, “Margo’s down, she’s hit, he took her car, he’s running east on Clete, he’s turning north on Seventy-five…”
    Virgil was out on the street and Stryker shouted, “She’s bad, she’s bad…”
    “Get her in your truck, run it to the hospital.” Together, they lifted her into the backseat of the truck. She had shotgun-pellet wounds in her face and neck; she was semiconscious, pumping blood, and Stryker took off and Virgil shouted into the radio, to the dispatcher, “Call the emergency room, they’ve got a gunshot wound coming in, gonna need a surgeon, gonna need some blood…”
    “I think I got him, I think I got him,” Jensen called. Big Curly: “I got him too, he’s running north on Seventy-five…” And a third cop, unknown to Virgil: “I’m running south on Seventy-five, I’m just going past Ambers, I don’t see him yet.”
    Virgil took the truck back down the street and cut onto the main drag, saw flashing lights ahead, accelerating out of town. More lights were filing in behind him, every cop in the city, then Jensen called, “He’s turned off at the park, he’s turned at the park, he’s headed up to Judd’s…He’s running out of road.”
    Virgil: “Dispatch, start breaking people around the perimeter of the hill, we don’t want everybody at the same spot up on top. Tell them to put their lights on the hill but get out of the trucks in the dark behind them, watch for him coming down the hill.”
     
    V IRGIL WAS two hundred yards behind Big Curly, who was two hundred yards behind Jensen, who was a half mile behind Williamson. Virgil saw Carr’s truck, driven by Williamson, climbing the hill toward Judd’s, then Jensen’s taillights flaring as he slowed to turn through the park gates and up the hill, then Big Curly slowing, and then Virgil was slowing, and then Jensen said, “Holy shit! He’s turned down the hill toward the bluff, toward the Buffalo Jump. Man, he’s headed right toward it…Jesus Christ!”
    Virgil had turned and was looking up the hill when he saw the lights of the lead car, Williamson, bounding over humps in the turf, once, twice, and then he was gone.
    “He went over,” Jensen screamed. “Jesus Christ, he went over.”
    Virgil shouted: “Dispatch, get people down there. Larry. Stop where you are: put your headlights down there, Big Curly, get up by Larry, put your headlights across the slope, I’m coming in, I’ll bet he bailed out before the car went over the edge.”
    Then he was there, pulling past the second cop, pulling past Jensen, playing his lights across the slope; saw no movement, was out of the truck, stepped back to Jensen and Big Curly and said, “Get back out of the light, guys, get back in the dark.”
    “Don’t see anybody. I don’t see anybody,” Jensen said. He and Big Curly both had shotguns. Virgil popped the back of his truck, unlocked the toolbox, lifted out the semiauto .30-06 and two magazines; opened his duffel, took out a long-sleeved camo shirt that he used for turkey