Phantoms

stop in front of the terminal.
    Burt Sandler shoved a few five-pound notes into the driver’s hand. He glanced at his watch. “Dr. Flyte, let’s get you on that plane.”
     
    From his window seat, Timothy Flyte watched the city lights disappearing beneath the storm clouds. The jet speared upward through the thin rain. Soon, they rose above the overcast; the storm was below them, clear sky overhead. The rays of the moon bounced off the churning tops of the clouds, and the night beyond the plane was filled with soft, eerie light.
    The seatbelt sign winked off.
    He unbuckled but couldn’t relax. His mind was churning just as the storm clouds were.
    The stewardess came around, offering drinks. He asked for Scotch.
    He felt like a coiled spring. Overnight, his life had changed. There had been more excitement in this one day than in the entire past year.
    The tension that gripped him was not unpleasant. He was more than happy to slough off his dreary existence; he was putting on a new and better life as quickly as he might have put on a new suit of clothes. He was risking ridicule and all the old familiar accusations by going public with his theories again. But there was also a chance that he would at last be able to prove himself.
    The Scotch came, and he drank it. He ordered another. Slowly, he relaxed.
    Beyond the plane, the night was vast.
     

Chapter 27
    Escape
     
    From the barred window of the temporary holding cell, Fletcher Kale had a good view of the street. All morning he watched the reporters congregating. Something really big had happened.
    Some of the other inmates were sharing news cell to cell, but none of them would share anything with Kale.
    They hated him. Frequently, they taunted him, called him a baby killer. Even in jail, there were social classes, and no one was farther down the ladder than child killers.
    It was almost funny. Even car thieves, muggers, burglars, holdup men, and embezzlers needed to feel morally superior to someone. So they reviled and persecuted anyone who had harmed a child, and somehow that made them feel like priests and bishops by comparison.
    Fools. Kale despised them.
    He didn’t ask anyone to share information with him. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of freezing him out.
    He stretched out on his bunk and daydreamed about his magnificent destiny: fame, power, wealth…
    At eleven-thirty, he was still lying on his bunk when they came to take him to the courthouse for arraignment on two counts of murder. The cellblock guard unlocked the door. An other man—a gray-haired, pot-bellied deputy—came in and put handcuffs on Kale.
    “We’re shorthanded today,” he told Kale. “I’m the only one detailed for this. But don’t you get some damn-fool idea that you’d have a chance to make a break for it. You’re cuffed, and I’ve got the gun, and nothing would please me as much as shooting your ass off.”
    In both the guard’s and the deputy’s eyes, there was loathing.
    At last, the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison became real to Kale. To his surprise, he began to cry as they led him out of the cell.
    The other prisoners hooted and laughed and called him names.
    The potbellied man prodded Kale in the ribs. “Get a move on.”
    Kale stumbled along the corridor on weak legs, through a security gate that rolled open for them, out of the cellblock, into another hall. The guard remained behind, but the deputy prodded Kale toward the elevators, prodded him too often and too hard, even when it wasn’t necessary. Kale felt his self-pity giving way to anger.
    In the small, slowly descending elevator, he realized that the deputy no longer saw any threat in his prisoner. He was disgusted, impatient, embarrassed by Kale’s emotional collapse.
    By the time the doors opened, a change had occurred in Kale, as well. He was sill weeping quietly, but the tears were no longer genuine, and he was shaking with excitement rather than with despair.
    They went through another checkpoint. The deputy presented a set of papers to another guard who called him Joe. The guard looked at Kale with undisguised disdain. Kale averted his face as if he were ashamed of himself. And continued to cry.
    Then he and Joe were outside, crossing a large parking lot toward a row of green and white police cruisers that were lined up in front of a cyclone fence. The day was warm and sunny.
    Kale continued to cry and to pretend that his legs were rubbery. He kept his shoulders