More Twisted

“Let’s spell the boys on the roadblocks.”
    Outside, Sheriff Mills pointed Dave Sloan to the garage where his Chevy was being fixed and climbed into his squad car with his deputy. He wiped the sweat witha soggy paper towel and said good night to the salesman. “Stay cool.”
    Sloan laughed. “Like a snowball in hell. ’Night, Sheriff.”

    In Earl’s Automotive, Sloan wandered up to the mechanic, who was as stained from sweat as he was from grease.
    “Okay, she’s fixed,” the man told Sloan.
    “What was wrong with it?”
    “The cap’d come loose and your coolant shot out is all. Feel bad charging you.”
    “But you’re going to anyway.”
    The man pulled his soggy baseball cap off and wiped his forehead with the crown. Replaced it. “I’d be home in a cold bath right now, it wasn’t for your wheels.”
    “Fair enough.”
    “Only charged you twenty. Plus the tow, of course.”
    Any other time Sloan would have negotiated but he wanted to get back on the road. He paid and climbed into the car, fired it up and turned the AC on full. He pulled onto the main street and headed out of town.
    Ten miles east of Hatfield, near the interstate, he turned into the parking lot of a Greyhound bus station. He stopped the car in a deserted part of the lot. He climbed out and popped the trunk.
    Looking inside, he nodded to the young bearded man in prison overalls. The man blinked painfully at the brilliant light above them and gasped for air. He was curled up fetally.
    “How you doing?” Sloan asked.
    “Jesus,” Tony Windham muttered, gasping, his head lolling around alarmingly. “Heat . . . dizzy. Cramps.”
    “Climb out slow.”
    Sloan helped the prisoner out of the car. Even with the beard and sweat-drenched hair he looked much more like a preppy banker than a serial killer—though those two activities weren’t mutually exclusive, Sloan supposed.
    “Sorry,” the salesman said. “It took longer than I’d thought for the tow to come. Then I got stuck in the sheriff’s office waiting for them to come back.”
    “I went through two quarts of that water,” Windham said. “And I still don’t need to pee.”
    Sloan looked around the deserted lot. “There’s a bus on the hour going to Cleveland. There’s a ticket in there and a fake driver’s license,” he added, handing Windham a gym bag, which also contained some toiletries and a change of clothes. The killer stepped into the shadow of a Dumpster and dressed in the jeans and T-shirt, which said “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” Windham pitched his prison outfit into the Dumpster. Then he hunched over and shaved the beard off with Evian water and Edge gel, using his fingers to make certain he’d gotten all the whiskers. When he was finished he stuffed his hair under a baseball cap.
    “How do I look?”
    “Like a whole new man.
    “Damn,” the boy said. “You did it, Sloan. You’re good.”
    The salesmen had met Tony Windham in the prison library a month ago when he was supervising upgrades of the penitentiary computer systems. He found Windham charming and smart and empathic—the same skills that had catapulted Sloan to stardom as a salesman. Thetwo hit it off. Finally, Windham made his offer for the one thing that Sloan could sell: freedom. There was no negotiation. Sloan set the price at three million, which the rich kid had arranged to have transferred into an anonymous overseas account.
    Sloan’s plan was to wait for one of the hottest days of the year then, pretending there’d been a momentary electric blackout, would shut down the power and security systems at the prison using the computers. This would give Windham a chance to climb over the fence. Sloan would then pick up the killer, who’d hide in the trunk, specially perforated with air holes and stocked with plenty of water.
    Since he’d be coming from the prison, Sloan had assumed that every car would be searched at roadblocks so he’d stopped the car outside one of the few houses along Route 202 and left his coolant cap off so the car would overheat. He’d then asked to use the phone. He’d intended to learn a little about the homeowners so he could come up with a credible story about suspicious goings-on at the house and distract the cops, keep them from searching his car. But he’d never thought he’d find as good a false lead as the crazy plumber, Greg.
    I realized that there’s no difference between life and death. Not a bit. Whatta you think about